#hidden bird

I have someone. 

The words still ring in her ears, sometimes. When she is alone and thinks she is safe, she can hear herself saying the fatal sentence, swinging the sword upon the neck of their love. The heart clenches in her chest, she bites her lips. The familiar dull pain grows behind her eyes and cheeks, and she bites harder to prevent the tears from falling, from streaming, from cascading and tumbling down her face. She has been accustomed to casual suffering, those little things that bring the salty water to the eyes. A late train when you are waiting in the cold, cold night. Breaking something that really mattered. Missing animals notices on the street. A lost toy in a parking lot. The phantom pain in her bosom. 

She had packed and hid the suitcase under the bed. She had cooked dinner - the best she had ever made. She waited for him to come home (he had told her he would be early today, because he couldn't wait to see her after having been gone on mission for two weeks). She had found her best mask, calm and smiling. She had left nothing to fate, had left nothing show through the sad veil of her eyes. She reminded herself why she had to do it, why it would be best for both, and why she had to break his heart in order to protect him from a greater pain. She had almost lost the thread when she saw him in the flesh, all happy and bubbly and smiling and in love. The fists clenched and the heart skipped a beat. 

I am leaving tonight. This is over. I have someone. 

She lowered her eyes. She couldn't take anything anymore. She couldn't take the look upon his face. She couldn't take the lethal silence which had fallen. She couldn't take the sweet sound of the rain starting to fall on the windows. She couldn't take the sight of the crystal glasses flying across the room in anger. She couldn't take her own cowardice. 

Pain grew bigger and bigger inside her chest as her knees became feeble. She took off the wedding ring and noticed how her long, white fingers were shaking. She almost let out a nervous smile, but she bit the inside of her cheeks till blood came and it stopped. She couldn't hear a word he was saying, a sound he was uttering. The world was closing around her as she headed for the bedroom, grabbed the suitcase, and allowed herself a last look at him. The taste of ashes came to her mouth. A single tear ran down her cheek, her jawline and crashed on the floor. Her lips tried to move, but every whispered word would only make it worse, and she went out, with nothing more than the trail of her strawberry scent behind her. It was only when she was in the street that she allowed herself to throw up and scream and let herself sinking into darkness. 

Now only remain the scratches inside her tights, when she had scraped until her nails hurt, until the skin had peeled off, little bits by little. The night of her departure, only physical pain had been able to match the hollow in her chest. Tiny little white lines run along the creamy skin and when someones asks, she answers that when she was a teenager, she grew up too fast and that had left stretch marks. Nothing was ever so simple as that lie, since everybody believed. When she thought that she was going to die from all this loneliness, she reminded herself of how it had been a necessary evil for a greater good. Of how he wouldn't have been able to handle any harm done to her. 

I have someone.

She did - only not that kind of someone. Rather, the one who gives you nausea in the morning, the afternoon and everywhere you go. The one who forces you to sit or lay down for hours. The one who weakens you in your flesh and mind. The one who brings Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death - the four horsemen in one disease. The one who wakes you in the middle of the night and the one who tears out your own limb. Phantom pain the chest. 

She sees him everyday. How strange it is, after having moved back to London, by the sea and then New-York, to be back to Miami, where everything happens under the sun. She sees him everyday, as well as the anger in his eyes, and the weariness. She couldn't have done differently. She needed the money. He didn't need the truth. Not yet. Let him think of her as capricious woman, as the one who ruined the later years of his life, as someone unworthy of any kind of love or pleasure. As the one who broke everything in him.

You deserve this. You knew it when you did it. 

She seems him everyday, and she tastes the ashes in her mouth. She feels the sword in her hand, like when she had swung it. She feels the pain in her bosom and everything come swirling before her eyes. She wants to speak, to say something, but her lips are sealed. Every whispered word makes it worse. Yet there are words she wants to say, she needs to say, she is dying to say. Words to reconcile the violence in her heart. Words to fulfill every prayer she uttered since she left.