Page 127 of The Kiss of Deception

The thump thump thump behind my ribcage beats steadfast, a hollow ricochet against bruised bones. Breathe in, breathe out, oxygen mingles with gushing blood inside knotted veins. All limbs move according to command, all cells follow protocol.

My body doesn’t care that my world is collapsing. It’s harmony and mechanical precision and the eerie serenity that could only come with the continuous practice and preparation for these contingencies.

I lower myself to my nook under a tall window between shelves heavy with stories, where I used to spend my growing hours with friends that lived free in the pages of books.

Like some sort of sorcery, it still clings to the walls—the smell that traveled and penetrated the furthest doors of such a gigantic place without knocking, determined to hug me in the distance. It still comes to hug me.

There is a sourness in it now, though. Any comfort in it melts until it reeks of past, of nostalgia and melancholy—not home.

My home smells like deep seas, salty air and sunshine.

My home.

I ran away from it. I ran away. Fooled by a semblance of control fueled by abandonment issues, I ran.

Because if I left, I would no longer be worrying, waiting for the day he inevitably left, when and how beyond my control.

And I was terrified I would lose him—my home—so I left before he could leave. As though that hurts any less.

Silly, silly, silly girl.

Every time I think it’ll get easier with time and practice, I uncover new layers of fears, new struggles.

Without their foundation, all my ceilings crumble, and the rain drenches me.

But the rain is a storm of sorrow and salt.

The tears belong to a little girl, and they arrive in rivulets that can’t be stopped. The pain is as old as herself, and as raw as a fresh wound.

It’s old grief stripped bare by new loss. It’s all the hurt she never allowed herself to feel, and all the hurt she can’t block herself from feeling right now.

I want to distance myself from her, tell myself I’m not that little girl anymore—but I am. We’re one and the same.

So in the darkness, in the silence, in my loneliness, as much unwilling as I’m willing, I surrender to the tears, letting them batter against my sensitive cheeks until they drench my clothes—until Miles’s hoodie soaks them.

I don't try to stop them anymore—I couldn’t if I tried. I don’t choke them down inside a dark pit. I don’t chastise them.

I let them flow, and I let them fall.

I let them free.

Hours pass. I don’t know how many, but the first rays of sunshine overshadow the lamp.

It’s a new day.

I’m not a new girl.

The tears dried in parallel lines. I wipe them with cold water that cools the heat they’d left in their tracks.

In the mirror above the sink of my old bathroom, my image doesn’t match my inside. I feel maimed and marred, but there is no blood. No bruises.

I still stand with all four limbs and ten fingers and a newfound clarity of what and who I want. And who I want to be.

And if I want it, I have to fight for it.

And I will.

I spent my adulthood running from my own life, burying myself in work and anything that allowed me to forget the pain—to pretend it didn’t exist, and it didn’t touch me.

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