1 (jaylor) wisteria hearts and caged folk songs

chapter one.

She looked out the window and glanced down at the crowded New York City streets. Christmas time - the bright lights and gingerbread cookies, was just around the corner. Two weeks away. Nearly her birthday. It should have been the season to celebrate, not the season of darkness. Of despair and desolate memories. It should have been the season for pumpkin spice lattes and Christmas trees, lights and decorations. Instead, it was a time she'd much rather skip entirely. It was a time she wished she could erase, a time she wished she did not know like the back of her hand.

The woman with golden curls leaned against the glass, sighing. Her attention shifted to the pattern her breath made against it. The way it fogged up, blocking her view. The way it made her feel sheltered from the world, like she was alone. As if she didn't live in one of the most chaotic cities on the planet. She could almost imagine she was trapped in a snow globe, an hourglass because today was one of those days where she was at risk of falling right through. Cracking at the edges, breaking beyond repair. Broken bones and cracked skin and a shattered heart. They were things that had become all too familiar to her these days - even when she tried to ignore them. Even when she tried to fake a smile, laugh, or pretend that she was fine. She wasn't fine.

She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured the place she wanted to be - a frozen lake, ice singing around her, the snow falling to the ground and opened them again. That was her happy place. That was the place that Taylor went to when she wanted this whole thing to disappear. She'd seen it once, in a painting a long time ago. The pink velvet chair that she was sitting on? She wanted it gone. But it was her only comfort. Her only hope. One of the things that kept her holding on. The only thing that she had to cling onto, the only place of solace.

Her phone buzzed, and she left the comfort of the window. Of her pink velvet chair.

Taylor had always come to that window when she felt like she didn't want to do it anymore, when it all got too much for her. Her job, her life, her love... It was overwhelming. So she often came here, to this window with the pink velvet chair that she'd grown to love, but also despised so profoundly. She almost felt like it kept her safe. It helped her to remember the young girl that had walked into New York that first time and written a song in the kitchen because she never wanted to grow up. Because she'd just moved to this city when she'd purchased the chair. She'd been so young, so naive... so hopeful. But it betrayed her - the number of times she'd been crying in that very spot, the number of times she'd been aching and wanting it all to come to an end.

Oh, how the times had changed since then since her first night alone in this big, wide city. That little girl - who was she? Where was she now? So scared to speak out and use her voice, adored by millions, crumbling under the pressure of an eating disorder. Hands wandering her body at all hours, scars on her arm that never get the chance to heal. Hair recovering from being bleached, her eyes tired and hopeless.

The window often reminded her why she came here in the first place.

It was the city of dreams, after all.

Some days she could see those dreams, her dreams streaking across the sky in a thousand different specks of glitter, and those are the days when she feels alive and in love with life. But those days are few and far between. Most of the time it felt as if her dreams lay helpless on the pavement, being crushed under stilettos and sneakers. Her sidewalk chalk had been erased as if it had never existed... as if her fantasies had disintegrated.

I'll be back in ten, the message said, and Taylor brought her knees to her chest. She did love him, she did. He brought her chocolates when they'd been in a fight - even though she'd never eat them. He would buy her flowers on her birthday and wanted to spend all his time with her. He brought her necklaces and bracelets that she left in her jewellery box.