There’s a feeling of ache when Aidan leaves the room, and him behind in it.
It grows up from his belly into his heart, then his throat. It takes him a while. To realise its bile, mangled sickness sitting alongside his tongue. He lets it sit there focusing on the slide of acid against his teeth.
It’s rancid.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” she said “would you like to join us for dinner?”
He nods a small no, words clogged too deep within him—tongue too paralysed.
And no matter how much it breaks him the world keeps going. He find his way home, past the hedges and play grounds gone silent. In his room the tears slow down into small drops coating his eyelashes. He wipes away at them but finds they never leave. In his relentless pursuit they start up again, like waves crashing against cliff sides—unrelenting.
Outside the moon shifts the tides, and Rom loses a part of himself again.
