"Was bittersweet to say the least

One life begins, one comes undone"

✦

Sizzling, quiet pops and an overcast of humid fog. Thin gossamer coated pockets of air, teetering the surface tension of opaque umber waters. Deflating bubbles sans flames to burst the gaseous atoms from the film of hot tastebud enveloping richness. Afloat sponges of pillowy plush, chalky white trampolines; all sprinkled in by the hand of a sweet tooth.

Hot chocolate. My mother used to make hot chocolate.

Whether it snowed or shined and it was 97° degrees outside and we had itchy sweat pooling in our underarms—she made hot chocolate.

My favorite occasion to enjoy the grainy velvet amenity was when the clouds were puffy and shuddered with precipitation, wringing like sopping mops.

It wasn't raining today, though the bulbous tears drying as they curved around the leeward sides of my cheeks mimicked the weather suitably.

I wasn't sure as to exactly why I was crying. Maybe it was the steam billowing from the pot on stove, irritating my eyes. Maybe it was the overflowing nothingness floating through every vein, every muscle, and every bone, bleeding out of my eyes as an only means of escape. Or maybe it was because my mom hadn't made me hot chocolate since I was 15 and never would again.

Until a single drop plummeted into the bubbling swirl of milk, cocoa, and sugar, and splashed in its sudden desire to be known had I realized I was leaking. I was an open faucet with a repairman in the home of another woman.

I hovered over the heat, penetrating and opening my humid pores. Waiting. Always waiting.

As I stirred it, it resembled a whirlpool of puckering leather. I heard the wails and agony induced screeches of cows being stripped raw of their skin.

After a suitable time I poured the drink into a cup, it flushing around the glass, before spoiling it with marshmallows. I rested into the uncomfortably solid oak wood seats by the table and sat in an unsightly hunched position over the cup. It was as if I was attempting to read my fortune with my concentrated gaze.

The mug was hot and steaming—slightly burning my palms. But I didn't move. My fingers were locked around the mug as my body was to the chair and my feet were to the floor.

I stared into the hot chocolate, studying the small scattering of marshmallow lily pads floating in the sweet, murky pond. As the seconds passed they absorbed more and more of the cocoa liquid, steadily becoming more gooey and disfigured.

It reminded me of love—it seems like a buoy even in the grandest of dark depression saturated oceans. But eventually that love will dissipate into a fading saccharine stream of heartache, blending into the standing melancholiness.

Marshmallows dissolve. Love diffuses.

This cord of thoughts fueled me with an urge to flip the mug upside over and dump the hot chocolate straight onto the tiles. It would grow cold and drain of its potent color, becoming a sticky, unwanted mess.

Just as I had the previous night.

Instead I poured it down my throat, the now lukewarm liquid slipping down and dripping to my soles. It tasted like water, as if my taste buds were numb.

The drink once settled my every nerve and calmed every storm, but now it more so compared to dumping water into a well, more trash into a can.

Jerking back with a screech, I rose from my position. My eyes bored into the speckled tiles where my sleeping imprint lay.

I saw it—I saw myself lying there curled into fetal position, whining in my sleep for warmth; cooing into the air for his arms to wrap around my waist like a belt and force the carbon dioxide out of my lungs.

With a freshly brewed idea, I deserted the kitchen and sped walked to the garage, swinging around corners in angst.

The naked smell of the room, inundated through its creaks by the autumn air, sent a shudder down my spine. I hadn't been here for weeks.

My easel wept in the farthest, coldest corner, devoid of a canvas and of its purpose. I wondered if it would disintegrate into dust if I touched it.

Resting upon its legs lied a small yellowing canvas. On its surface was scarred a single line in crimson. It was a butterfly's wing, the first stroke to what would resemble a children's piece.

Padding to the dusted, abandoned collection, the dry concrete floor cooled the skin of my feet and littered it with dirt. I swiped a tub of maroon paint and a thick paint brush, refocusing my attention to the tiles.

Back in the kitchen, I cleared the dining chairs, sitting on the tiles next to where I had fallen asleep, and unscrewed the cap off the jar of paint.

Drenching the bristles in the blood, I swirled the brush around the old clumpy, clotted liquid slowly, tediously.

I carved the floor with the oozing knife, a thick sludgy, bubbling line of scarlet tattooing the ceramic and grout in between. My movement was slow and careful as I morphed into a perfectionist painting her own portrait.

Connecting the last of the border, I slid my feet back and admired it: the outline of the end.

The oval shape of my head bled half way under the table, casting a shadow down to the shoulders. My neck curved down into an L shape around my back and thighs, cutting off at my knees; a replication of my fetal position.

Crawling into the shape, I was soaked in a sudden egg wash of solitude and loss.

I was alone in my carcass, mourning the death of a woman whose heart decomposed and molded, lethally contaminating the entirety of her.

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

"Yeah I'll be out in just a few minutes."

Upon waking up from an accidental rest, Matt's voice slid into my ears like the unrolling of a red velvet carpet: making way for the star.

As my vision split into the window hovering over the sink, the man of the hour, minute, and every second strolled casually into the kitchen.

I still gazed into the glass, reflecting the bulbs of fluorescent lights over the blend of blue hues. The sun seemed to be dim that night, only a shiver of its usual eminence. It was engulfed by the melancholy abyss, a reflection of our earth if Uranus swallowed it whole.

The jingle of a call's end broke my concentration.

Matt had halted and was scanning my limbs, which I noticed were strewn in gory splotches. It looked as if I had gotten into a fight with a paint ball gun or someone had mistaken me for a wall and swiped me with a paint roller. I sat in a patch of smeared berry guts. Red swollen streaks surrounded me.

Despite his examination, it still felt as though he was seeing through me, more so looking at the ceramic for damage instead of me.

He cleared his throat and I froze. I look like mess. An ugly freak.

"Is that...?"

His voice caused a weak flutter to swirl in my stomach. The butterflies wings were broken and shriveled.

"No." I sounded like a little girl under interrogation, scared of her situation, longing for home and the person who embodied it. Where'd he go?

"What time is it?" I pondered, still yet to make eye contact.

"Five-ish."

"Okay."

It was quiet for half a minute. Both of us were concerned slightly for the gory girl on floor with her hands squeezing her shins. Though both of us cared more about the man not wearing his watch to depict the exact time.

"Staying for dinner?" Hope latched onto every syllable, clinging to each decibel like a newborn to their mother, begging desperately for nurture and nourishment. The letters wailed and whined, starving for a drop of care.

"I'd love to but..." His voice became an anthem of "I'd love to's" after that. The phrase droned on in my head til it lost its meaning and became a blurb of unfamiliar, muddled sounds. I couldn't remember the last time he had said the word 'love' in my presence. I inscribed the vibrations into my soul, shedding a small speck of color to the grey aura.

When I glanced over he was gone and the sky was pitch black. The sun had been kidnapped by its inevitable orbit and every star had fleeted to shine in another funeral's landscape.

I scraped my self together and galumphed to the porch, catching the last moment of his farewell. He left in the same car he had come to the house in this morning with her. The windows were tinted and shielded the activity inside. Though, my mind was convincing enough to the grazing of lips and interlocking of hands and brushing of thighs my eyes themselves could not perceive.

A quiet humming then piqued my attention. It was a quaint buzz of a sound reminiscent to a melody I couldn't pinpoint. The influx of notes stirred a stripe of nausea to coat my throat and my pulse to pick up, my heart beat slamming on its pedals. My body was reacting before my mind and my fingers were aching to scratch and pick at themselves. The throaty tune fidgeted endlessly around the configurations of my memory with a pickaxe in hand, meddling through the cave of repressed memories.

Clasped hands and aching cheeks. Squinting eyes and quiet sweet nothings. A hand on the valley of skin by the tale end of a spine. The tickling, swirling drape of a white gown on toes. His eyes. His scintillating eyes incinerating mine, melting my pupils into the encasing ring of leafy, lively hues. His eyes full of life, so full of love. Bubbling, gushing love that burnt and engraved the pads of my fingers, his fingerprint smelting into my own, interlocking our souls into one gleaming orb of utter worship, palpable devotion, and sugar sweet heartache. Dripping, dribbling jolly rancher goo pouring from every orifice. Pop rock shocks exploding like fireworks in our veins. The stare of Aphrodite. The stare of onlookers everywhere, watching the newly betrothed prance their first dance under the atmospheric dark crochet blanket, blazing balls of fire bursting through its holes.

You're everything I need.

Our song. The buzzing throat thrum of a man among the crickets.

My ears tuned and perked to the vibrations, my brain racking for a compass to the skin shredding, tooth pulling song.

My feet ascended and drifted with feeble grace, fearfully drifting towards the beacon of destruction.

At the perimeter of the driveway the sound became louder, malignantly encasing my skin in desolation. I continued until I was in the middle of the road.

Then I found it. Him.

Laying delicately on their back with their hands draped across their stomach, rested a man in the street to my left.

I approached him, hovering over him before his outstretched feet, unacknowledged by him.

His jaw shifted as he purred, each high note causing him to crease his cheek and pull his lips to the side to hit it. His lips were thin but round like a flattened watermelon that softly curved slightly inward at top; his nose a flat slope, but pleasantly so, complimenting the rest of his features. Gently shuddering, his eyelids never reeled back. He was pretty. He was at peace.

How could he be so serene humming a song of such drear.

Can't you see.

The tune of unrequited love.

You're everything I hoped for.

Of loss and longing.

Everything I need.

A sailor's salute when lost at sea, begging for a siren to lure him into their trap and end his tragedy beautifully.

Quietly, I squatted down and clawed a puny pebble from the concrete.

With zero strength I pelted it at the man, aiming for his T-shirt clad chest. Though, I missed my target entirely and struck him straight in the clear expanse of his neck. I squeaked at my mistake, taking a step back.

He choked on air for a second and his whole body rippled with a shock like he had been tased. Thankfully the hum had withered with the hit, but as his eyes popped open he didn't seem as grateful.

I felt slightly bad for disturbing his tranquility, for now he seemed quite perturbed with flaring nostrils and burrowing eyebrows.

"What the—" he said forcefully, moving to lean on his forearms in order to see me.

But instantaneously his eyes softened and his lips deflated, his brows assuming their natural place.

"Can you stop humming... please," I peeped, avoiding his stare.

"Okay—are you okay?"

He was referring to the paint, the paint mocking me and deceiving others to be blood, especially in the dim yellow light from the lampposts. It was matted into my hair, making it one big clump, and stained into the fabric of my blank shirt and patchily dried like plaster over the drained color of my legs.

I nodded and pivoted in the direction of my house.

"Are you sure?" Was he British?

"Paint," I stated, my back and slumped shoulders still facing him.

I waited a moment but he said nothing more, so I walked the couple feet to my driveway and onward. When I reached the door and maneuvered to pull it open, in my peripheral vision I had seen his body stood like a statue. He was standing, his toes pointed towards my porch and his eyes penetrating my own for a fleeting second.

Shutting the door, I shut out his quivering lip and their unspoken inquiries.

Alone. But strangely comforted by the stranger who took up too much of my thoughts for me to think about Joe Cocker and I's desertion.

You are so beautiful to me.

hi there it's been a while.

so I've come up with this

after deciding to rebrand or

whatever and I still think it's crap

it's just... muddy idk.

thanks for reading anywoozy and

lmk what u think with a

vote if you're into that ig.

peace out ☺