She sat by the window, with the rain pelting the foggy glass, breathing hot air into the cold. She took her finger and slowly ran it across the pane, pushing away the gathered dew and then running her fingers up, down, up, down. G O N E sprawled in messy cursive. Her thoughts were as dreary as everything surrounding her. It was as if the rain was complementing her. After all, if it was sunny, depressing thoughts would be banished to the back of her head.
They had all left her, her past lovers. Their words echoed across the wooden floor, false promises stealing pieces of her heart until the outer shell was the only thing that remained. It was beautiful really. Her shell was so delicate, like a bottle tossed into the ocean, broken and grinded against the sand and rocks, until it finally rested on a beach somewhere, all edges smoothed. She was seaglass, a reminder of the past, but beautiful.
the first told her that she was an angel, just one without wings. “But that’s ok” , he said, “sometimes there is no need to fly”. He found a single mom on concord avenue two weeks later. She got child support. He bought her a ring soon after.
The third she met in the winter, where for months, white was the only variation of color. He liked to push her on her sled, but he laughed with more joy when he pushed her down the stairs. Red was the second color discovered that winter.
The fourth was the last. His love aged like a plum, darker and sweeter each week she was with him. He stroked her knee with his fingers when they sat upright at the doctor’s office, and he stroked her neck with his lips as she cried, laying horizontally on his bed. “Where did you get the scars on your back?” he would murmur into her skin.
“I fell down the stairs once”, she would whisper in the direction of his voice, her words floating in the darkness of the bedroom. The tip of his thumb would run down the pale pink scars, but she wouldn’t feel him there, that part of her had become numb long before. He left her two years later, his side of the room empty except for the spare key resting on the mahogany side table. His smell still lingered carelessly on her pillow.
Whenever it rained, she sat at the window, shadows gathering at her feet.
