SK's Story

Written after hearing a close friend recall an emotionally cruel experience, the effects of which still resonate within her years later.

Strong emotions are subject to a gravity of their own. Love causes us to soar and makes all the troubles of life seem light as a feather; it makes us feels like we can shoulder the weight of the world as if it were nothing at all. But when love leaves, the reality of gravity returns to us and we are crushed beneath the weight of all that love had made weightless before. Indeed, the empty space of love removed is a most profound emotional agony. Fitting, then, that love is often depicted as being brought to us by Cupid’s arrow, for the head of an arrow does the most damage when it is ripped from the flesh, leaving behind a bleeding wound.

 

Seeing you smile for someone else, it felt as if the butterflies in my chest had died; all the fluttering just... stopped. And in that moment I realized that you are a false lighthouse, a fire on the distant shore built upon treacherous rocks. Your smile is a constellation that lures the hopeful and innocent to the depths of despair, mocking their desperate disbelief when they see the uncaring truth in your eyes as they step over the edge, the realization that you never intended to catch them sinking in just a moment too late.

You enveloped me like midnight with eyes like shining stars, but little did I know that they were more like the moon; bright against the darkness but reflecting nothing but false light, devoid of all warmth. Your touch as soft as a cloud, covering me like rain and leaving me just as cold. You are the heart of winter, disguised as summer. You would be the death of me, your lips leaving mine shivering and slowly turning blue; your deceitful affections warmed my heart but when you left emotional hypothermia set in.

You unabashedly exploited the poetry of your passionate embrace, unceremoniously corrupting the art that I imagined within the geometry of my desire. The smoke you exhale stings my eyes and slowly squeezes my chest until I can barely breathe. Or maybe this is simply the weight of your venomous words; I am no longer sure.

Like sweet poison, the taste of your lips only becomes bitter once your honeyed camouflage has left my tongue and merely the corrosive truth remains. As if discarding just another finished cigarette, you crush the remnants of my affections into the blackened ashtray where your heart should have been.

In this desolate landscape littered with fragments of the broken promises you gave to me, I hate myself for ever having loved you. Kept company by the dust of other hearts that you have stolen and turned to ashes, here I am far from alone. 

Yet I am lonely.

Reviews

[Sandra Kad]

I am here to relay a message from SK.

First, she thanks you for just.. existing.. for being you and for being there no matter how far apart you guys are or how long it's been since the last time you spoke.

She thanks you (and every/any higher power should they be listening) for being so gifted with words.

Most of all, she wants to thank you for always listening and for being her friend- regardless and despite the ups and downs. Because honestly, every HUMAN on this earth needs a friend like you.

Lastly, she would like me to relay that she misses you immensely and is waiting impatiently for your next visit to the middle of Fakeville.

[Aram Alexander]

Sand, mind telling SK that she's the kind of person that makes existence worth it?
She's the kind of friend that proves just how relative time really is because years could pass, yet the moment we meet again it feels as if I were listening to her improvise on the piano just yesterday. Despite my terrible faculty of memory, some things I will never allow myself to forget. I still think that anybody can write -we all know how to speak after all, and writing is not so different- but it takes a special person to inspire words worth writing down.
And with a mind like hers and a voice to match, listening isn't exactly a chore. ;)
Oh, and please let her know that I'm working my a*s off to be able to head over to Materialism City next February; if i remember correctly, we have a date with a grand piano. ;)