"It's always been that way, it seems

One love begins, one comes undone"

✦

It couldn't be seen through the thick patch of eager trees, but on the other side of the forest was the graveyard. I headed there at the thought, not ready to see Matt just yet.

Upon arriving, I was met with the no-name lady, immediately approaching her.

She looked up at me from her seat on the bench. Her body would eventually mold its shape into the stone; like a name it would be carved there in recognition of her devotion to the very spot.

"Hello," she greeted.

I situated myself next to her, hands grasping my knees. "Hi."

"It's been a bit since I've seen you, dear. How've you been?"

I glanced at her mushy smile and the constriction of my chest I was previously unaware of released. I had the sudden urge to cry.

"I've been okay," I said, my smile sharing qualities of a wince. "How are you?"

Her heavy cheeks slumped after a spoke. "Ah, dear," she shook her head, "things haven't quite cleared up now, have they?"

I frowned, my vision becoming blurry. My lips pouted as my head rocked side to side. I breathed in loudly through my nose, scared that if I spoke the dam would break.

Her arms raised from her sides and pulled me into her soft, stout body. A sob escaped me as I crashed into her chest. We were mere aquintances, yet her comfort was something I felt I had been starved of. Undeserving of? Unwanted by?

When I pulled away she brought her glove clad hand and wiped the tears from beneath my eyes.

"I don't know what to do," I croaked, my skin burning where the winter air sucked the moisture from tears dry.

"Why not?"

I thought about Matt and I in this town where we'd always failed to escape, and the city where'd we'd always failed to escape to.

"Cause I can't predict the future," I joked cynically.

"Not based off the past?" She asked rhetorically.

I drug my front teeth against my bottom lip. Leonora. Matt. Melly. Death. Endings.

"Am I supposed to know? Would I know if it was... meant to be, I guess?"

"Do you believe in fate, dear?"

Fate? Was it inevitable that I would be sat here next to this woman I still didn't know the name of an unknown day of November, proceeding the death of my abandoning mother and infidelity of my husband? Would he have cheated regardless of any decision I made?

I became ever so present of the silver ring's clamp around my finger. "No, I don't."

"Then what to do is a question of what you want for yourself. Where do you want to be in a year? In a week? When your an old mush like me?" She smiled as she finished.

"Well, you've found the root of the issue," I said, smiling back sadly.

I had never formed an identity outside of my relationship with Matt, so for me it was more so a question of what do I want for us? Where do I want us to be down the line?

To answer the questions I had for myself, however, I needed the answers to crucial questions from the other half of us, Matt.

Standing up on sluggish legs, I peered at the no-name lady. "What's your name?"

"Silvia."

I reached my hand out and she followed my lead, shaking my hand. "Evdoxia."

Before I turned to confront Matt on where we stood and where'd we stand, I studied Silvia for a split second. Her eyes were not ugly nor were they merely green smudged messily into brown as I originally perceived. They were the marriage of rich, dark green moss grown over the varied shades of brown tree bark. A means of navigation? They were the innate resilience of nature to infiltrate its lushness and life into their given environments. Silvia was expansion and freedom and breath. Green and brown and moss and bark. Silvia was life.

Staring at her now, realizing her reflection was just across the graveyard—the forest—I knew she was never empty and never could be. As moss, she spread rabidly amongst everything she neared, not as a plague but as a relieving gauze, shading and shielding those she encompassed. A protector, Silvia unawarely coated everyone she neared in a veneer of calming ease. She whispered, slow down, in the ears of peers, think.

In having received and reciprocated love, she was only fertilized and inspired—enlightened to the reason why she would always protect, why she would always be moss on dry, brittle trees; always overlooked and depreciated. Her love was the voice of encouragement to continue to grow but not the catalyst. She did not need love to live, but to understand why she wants to. Silvia was the embodiment of to want and to achieve and to keep going. Silvia was the embodiment of why.

Staring at her now, sinking grooves into the bench she was sat, I knew her and what it was to flourish in your habitat. And staring down at my boots, feet too large to fit, I knew what it was to not.

She waved as we parted, lips in a frail grin. A green goodbye.

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Matt was sitting on the porch stairs when I arrived to the house. Waiting.

"Ev," he said, standing up.

"How long have you been out here?" I asked.

I don't know how many hours I'd been gone, but it was the cusp of afternoon, the sky cloudy and air dry, exempt of any bird's chirp.

He shrugged and I didn't know what to take of it, so I went to step around him to go inside the house where the heater was running. He reached out to me as I passed but I didn't let him catch me; he followed instead.

Reluctantly, I slid Harry's jacket off my shoulders and hung it on the coat rack. If Matt had noticed it wasn't mine, he didn't say anything about it.

He walked behind me, trailing me as I then went for the kitchen. "You've been crying?"

I sat down in a chair at the head of the small rectangular table. "How could you tell?"

"Your nose, it's all pink, and your eyes too. Your skin looks like it's stinging," he said, referring to the flaky skin by the corners of my eyes. It did burn a bit at his mention.

My question had been somewhat sarcastic and rhetorical but I'm not surprised he answered.

"Yeah," I replied for there wasn't much to say.

He took a seat besides me, his leg bouncing anxiously up and down. Waiting.

"Did something, uh, happen while you were out?"

There was an odd unspoken line of curiosity we could cross with one another's excursions. Him especially. He resisted questioning me too much for he knew he had done so much in secret he didn't quite deserve the freedom to delve into what I did with my own time. Whether or not it was his intention, I believe it had surpassed innocent interest; it was the subconscious scour for anything he could use against me so that he was not the only one in the wrong.

"No," I said.

His nose barley twitched, he didn't like my answer. The part of him with the nagging desire to know what I'd been doing or who I'd been with persisted, peeking out from his wiggling nostrils, his frustrated tick.

Matt had never been too jealous or territorial because I had always been so illustrative in my love and my affinity for being his love, but now things were very different. Now the discontinuation of Matt and Ev was up in the air, drying our skin and clogging our pores. It had the subtle scent of a citrus perfume.

But, he was aware he couldn't show his angst out of fairness, so he stuffed it in his pockets, leaving the lumps of it cloaked by fabric but still painfully prominent in shape, only haphazardly covered up. It was like a child hiding beneath a blanket during a game of hide and seek; you can spot the outline of their figure easily, but to entertain, you avoid and point out silly things to convince them they're not so obvious. Let him play.

"I booked a hotel," he said suddenly, not making eye contact.

I froze, boot only half slid off one of my feet. A hotel? He was leaving? For Melly? He is leaving me here and moving out for Melly? Just like that? After he told me he loved me, that he didn't love her, and he wanted to move away and start over? He's leaving?

Glancing up at me and my expression of terror, Matt's eyes widened. He reached his hands across the table for mine rapidly, grasping onto my cold fingers.

"No, no, Ev—not for me! For us! In the city!" He spat rapidly.

I released a bottled up breath, pulling my hands away from his. "Oh." Now it was my turn to look away.

"You think I would just... leave you like that?" He sounded small and vulnerable.

He pushed his wedding ring as far down as could on his finger, almost as if to screw it into his knuckle. To try to make it stay.

I wasn't sure how to answer his question. Based on my reaction it was very clear I still had a flight or fight mode activated for when it came to anything he said, always ready for something new and jarring to ensue. There was no safety or comfortability with us anymore, both believing the other was half way out the door and prepared to leave at the drop of a hat.

I almost said I'm sorry, but I thought over it for a moment. What did I have to apologize for? I interpreted what he said in hindsight of his past behavior. I'm not at fault for that, right?

I opted to shrug.

Putting his elbows onto his knees, he sunk and stretched his face into his palms, sighing sadly. "I understand."

After an awkward silence of a couple minutes where he recuperated, he explained the hotel booking. "It's in the city for this weekend, Friday night to Monday morning."

"...So a test run?"

He wanted to see how we would interact together there before making the final decision to pick up and go for real. It was smart to test the waters before making another commitment one of us might fall short in. Again.

He didn't reply and he didn't have to, it was a rhetorical question. So I asked another, non-rhetorical one. "Do you believe in fate, Matt?"

Tapping his sock clad foot as he thought, he likely wondered what answer would please me best.

"And be honest," I added.

"Yes," he decided.

"Why?"

With pursed lips he glanced between my eyes and the floor. "If I was eloquent with my words I'd come up with some grand way to express to you how I believe that I... that I belong here with you. But I can't, so I'll give it to you plainly: my sole purpose in life is to love you.

"It was always me and you, Ev. Fate brought us together. It didn't matter how or when it actually happened, because that moment we met was out of our control and would have happened regardless of any decision we made or thing that happened to us."

Before I could speak, he added, "and I really mean that. I love you and there's no possible dimension in which we don't spend our lives together."

"Why'd you see her last night?" I rebutted.

How could I possibly believe anything sentimental he said after it was just last night that he was rushing to wash his clothes clean of Melly?

He didn't speak, only stared at me in the midst of an internal conflict.

I bit my cheek aggressively, a nagging thought that's been pushing at the front of my brain, on the brink of bursting out for weeks finally doing exactly that.

"Is she pregnant?"

His eyebrows furrowed. "No," he said immediately, confusedly. "What made you think that?"

My whole mind was flooded to ease with this information. Though at his question a frown still sunk on my face.

"I..."

I looked around the room, pushing my boots back fully on my feet. Standing up, I sped walk out the kitchen, hearing an "Ev?" follow me as I went bursting into the sunroom.

My head shook from side to side rapidly. "They're all dead!" I cried, throwing my arms up in the air. They're all still dead.

Either hanging or inside pots scattered on the floor lay the remains of decomposing plant life. Brown, shriveled leaves wept under the weight of dust and abandon. Flower petals of the same fate littered drought ridden dirt. Everything was deprived of nutrients and care. The sun alone hadn't been enough.

Pinching the wiry tendril of a forsaken orchid, I plucked the stem easily from its decrepit roots, rolling it between my fingers. I held it as though it were a cigarette as I turned to look at a concerned Matt in the threshold.

"Why'd we let them die?" I asked in a monotone breath.

He didn't answer, his hands clasping the door frame tightly with a pallid expression on his face.

"Hmm?" I pushed, my eyes bleary from my refusal to blink.

Bending down and lifting my leg, I tugged at a boot, ripping one off and struggling in desperate breathes and huffs to remove the second one. "Get off!" I muffled in exasperation and frustration.

As I continued futilely yanking aggressively on the sole of the boot to where my ankle hurt, two hands grasped my shoulders.

"Ev, stop!" Matt bellowed.

Letting my foot drop back to the floor, a clunk of the boot resounded through the room.

Lifting my neck, I stared into his eyes. I couldn't detect the temperature, only observe the mute brown and speckled gold of his irises.

Slowly, I brought my hands to behind his neck, intertwining them and letting my forearms rest on his shoulders. His own hands rested on my waist, weighing me down to the ground.

And we just watched one another. Burning each other's features into our memories as if we had entirely changed and aged in the mere months of catastrophe.

"Ev—"

Cutting him off, I stood on my toes and crushed my lips into his in one firm, hard kiss. He responded, pressing his on lips against mine softly.

Pulling away, I read his confused gaze. He didn't move. Waiting.

I placed my hands onto his cheeks and ran my thumb over the prickle of facial hair he hadn't shaved in a few days. Wrapping one hand around the back of his neck, I pulled him down to me in a more aggressive kiss that extended beyond the previous peck.

His stubble scratched at my face, his body pressing to mine, and lips moving with my own in a foreign and unharmonious manner. It wasn't awkward—it was forced.

We were both exerting so much energy into trying to alight the charred match of our relationship, our friction barley enough to permit smoke to arise let alone a flame to spark. Because somehow kissing in the same manner we had months ago felt like an act, so unnatural and wrong but yet entirely the same as it had been. We had kissed so many times though now it felt like I was just trying. And he, waiting.

I wasn't even thinking about him. I was incarcerated to the thought of Melly. Was he thinking about Melly right now? How she kissed him? Were her lips softer? Her hands more sensual. She wasn't pregnant, no—but they had sex; he risked it.

Cold air caught my lips as I retreated. My face sunk, skin carrying the weight of sullen features like a mesh hammock stretching and stretching beneath too heavy a stress, gaining quickly towards the ground.

And I wanted him to initiate something. I wanted him to use me and fuck me. Make me feel how he made Melly feel. But he wouldn't. He could just wait.

I blinked to push the tears over my lash line to my cheek. I stepped away and around him and this time he did not follow. He stood there staring at my ghost—and through it, the dead orchid.

From my view in the doorway, his figure stood before the windows as a dark figure except the two slender beams of light which fell in an intersection converging over the left side of his chest where is heart lay beating.

And I believe it had stopped, as he turned his neck to look at me and I said, "I saw her at the pharmacy buying a pregnancy test."

"Oh."

"The day I asked if you wanted to have a baby," I exhaled, biting my cheek.

"...that makes more sense now." He frowned, shaking his head.

"It hurt. Seeing her there in that aisle, thinking about the fact that you might have impregnated her. You, the husband of the woman she shared with an innocent quip, unaware that it made you nothing but guilty!" I cried erratically, the past fully dawning on me.

"It was just sex—"

"It was not just sex! It will never be just sex!"

I tore my wedding ring of my finger, my knuckle unscathed from my aggression. It had grown loose.

"Ev—"

"Whether you wore your ring or not, we were always married. I can't understand why that meant nothing to you," I said shakily, having only slightly calmed down.

With my ring in my palm, I squeezed it tight as if to memorize its shape but erase it's color.

"No, Ev, don't take it off," he begged.

"Does it really mean anything?" I asked genuinely with a rising inflection.

He stared at my hand. "Y-yes, it means that there's hope. That I have a chance of redeeming myself." Hope?

I fought off a shrug while twiddling the fingers of my left hand, feeling less constricted than before. I couldn't say if I even believed in hope at that moment.

Altogether this neglected sunroom, imprisoning Matt, our rings, and me, was a dull scene. A sliver scene. All dehydrated, dysfunctional vocal chords strung out from obscure orchid-cigarette fumes. And death. All of us. Dead.

We had become one of them. Matt and I were one among the dead amaryllises and dead begonias and dead violets. We were the dead orchid—hung from ceiling and falling apart limb to limb. The rings, our seeds, that ceased growth because life cannot be spared with only the light to support it.

We had moved passed stagnancy and vegetation for we no longer had a chance. We couldn't be spared by any surplus of minerals or nutrients or water because our roots had shriveled and greyed. And they were loose, the roots. Any small force of a tug could easily yank them out. But who would it be?

So as I looked at my ring, contemplating Matt's desperation for me to give him hope in wearing it, in preserving the roots, I realized that there was never hope. The ring was a mere artifact and hope had died and cemented itself in the same grave.

I walked past Matt to place my hand around the edge of the orchid's pot, glancing over my shoulder at him. "You can't revive a plant unless it's roots are alive."

Backtracking my steps to leave, I stood for a second near him to deposit my ring in his hands, which he took mechanically, his face droopy and sullen and silent.

"Why'd you let them die, Matt?"

Well well well.... I'm been utter crap

at this whole writing shindig.

funny thing is how I thought this story

would be finished by now like a year ago

but life has a sneaky way of getting in

the way of things :(

cant say when I'll update next but

I'll try my best to get to it

peace out ☺