HEAVY HEARTED

she’d sent a floral arrangement. the woman had spent the bright hours of the day fussing over her distant ex-flame’s baby shower and just what she’d say about not being there - excuses ran through her brain one after the other, messages were written, rewritten, deleted, and rephrased while she milled over her life. kokoro was a clown, a court 𝓳𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻, to be strung along by the woman that she loved, that had 𝓸𝓷𝓬𝓮 loved her, but she kept on at it, resilient but ultimately doomed. flowers seemed the best choice, in the end, a pretty way to say that she had fled from everything that worried her. she’d always been told that 𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓼 suited her.

kokoro hadn’t travelled far, just to south korea which felt like a stone’s throw from japan in the way that it was too close, she felt like she instead should have travelled to the end of the earth and let it swallow her whole. to try and keep her mind from herself, from her clouded judgment and stubborn memories, she had treated herself to a nice dinner. a decidedly mediocre meal that looked better on the plate than it could have ever dreamed of tasting was the ticket to her end goal of a nice bottle of wine, and perhaps a few other drinks. if she was to be a downer to herself, she’d do it with a bitter glass - and better to do it somewhere where people didn’t know her.

though as her ever-present itch for nicotine raised its head, she excused herself from the cosy restaurant for a moment, pulling out a 𝔀𝓮𝓵𝓵-𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓭 pack of cigarettes. kokoro reached into her pocket for her lighter but alas - nothing. she turned to the nearest stranger, looking towards the doe-eyed woman who gave her a pause as she took her in. “sorry to bother you,” she offered the other a friendly smile, a red hue on her cheeks from the wine and the beginning of conversation hopefully with the other, “but would you have a lighter? i forgot mine inside - i’d be happy to repay a spark with a drink.”

the town’s heavy fog felt like a blanket that was encapsulating her whole self, swallowing her whole in its everything. as far as her dark eyes could make out, there was drab, 𝓰𝓻𝓲𝓶 architecture and fog - nothing much like the picturesque signs that she had passed on the ‘ten miles to’ and ‘welcome!’ signs for the town. yet she still wandered through the streets: the last week had felt like endless driving to her, hands numbing on the wheel and the window side scenery blurring itself away as it passed, and kokoro couldn’t stand it anymore. and the air freshener made her want to vomit. not that it made too much sense for her to weigh her options, her car was sitting at the edge of town hunkering on its last bit of gas having gone on for longer than it should ever have - much like the woman driving. 

underpopulated she could understand, 𝓭𝓮𝓪𝓭 she could get in the time’s economy, but devoid of any life was something that she simply was not accepting as she strayed further through the streets. she had been dragged on many ‘no work’ vacations to tiny countryside towns back home that she felt she could count the population with one hand, but no one, not even in the stores with their tacky blinking neon lights, wasn't sitting right with her.

apartments. the shabby building looked like a shining beacon to the traveller - if no one worked and no one wandered around, they had to live somewhere made her way into the building. even still with the empty lobby, the coldness bristling past her skin as she entered, there was some comfort in not being outside with the openness, the 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓷𝓮𝓼𝓼 creeping after her every step. “hello?” she called out, moving around the stairway door, “anyone home?” she questioned, her steps slowing. kokoro recalled the saying that hell was empty, and maybe it seemed to be true - lord knew she deserved to be there.

wild fantasies and impossible dreams always lead to emptiness