'The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation,' - Eudora Welty.
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I CAN'T CRY. Not anymore. I'm not sure of the moment I truly broke. I don't remember. It's like I can't even fathom the pain anymore. I'm beyond all of it. Just a mere shell.
Empty.
Maybe my nerves are just too frayed, too wayward to ever get back in touch with my emotions.
It's like my eyes are made of glass and my limbs of stone. There, but not really.
And my heart...
Home is where the heart is. Maybe that's why I don't have a home anymore. Surely, I can hear it beat, It's the only noise that fills my ears, as it seems overpowering and fill my entire being with its echo. But it's not there. Not in the sense that means something.
I lost it. Everything.
The walls he built, the roof he structured. The life we built, or tried building. It's crumbled. Gone. And I stand bare-toed in the ruins.
I know this numbness is a hoax, the last cricks of attempt to protect what's left of a broken heart, because in truth, something does remain after the heart leaves.
Memories. So bitter and so sweet, and so painful to remember that even your brain feels the thumps of discontent.
That's why closing your eyes is that much harder, because that's when you can almost, almost, hear the laughter that once ran through the halls. The footfalls that carried you together. And most of all, see the smiles that mended your heart on the darkest days.
"I didn't know where else to bring you," Emory's hesitant voice calls out from his hideout at the doorway. The way he holds on to the doorframe appears as a testimony to a structure stubbornly standing even though it lost its purpose.
I don't meet his gaze, even though if I did I surely wouldn't see him anyway. Instead I let my eyes sweep across the bedroom.
Everything is just as we left it. My gaze falls onto the book lying innocently on the nightstand.
I remember the last time Xavier touched it. The day he saved me again. He saved me over and over again, and now all I can think of is how insufficient I was when he needed me.
"I know I don't have to ask you if you're okay. We both know the answer to that, but... Is there anything I can do? Anything, just ask, and I'll do it," I hear Emory breathe out behind me.
I know he can't be my rock through this, there are too many snapped strings between us, but still there's something final in him being here again.
