here is the repeated image of a lover destroyed; glassheart

[Cordis]

She almost hates that the girl listens to her plea. It’s cruel either way, of course – either she keeps the contact and Cordis’s touch-starved body riots beneath it, or she withdraws. It’s better, this way. It’s better not to know too much what the girl feels like, lest it feel familiar, or like something she wants or deserves. Better not to know at all, so that she can continue on, unburdened of that knowledge. Glassheart stumbles out apologies, and Cordis is overwhelmed with the bizarre urge to comfort the girl, to touch her again. “It’s okay,” she says, more stable now that she is not threatened with her closeness, then, “I’m sorry. It’s hard.” The understatement of the year, that – it’s a waking agony, this, her own meager existence made empty, filled only with grief and memories and one extra beating heart that offers no comforts on endless nights. But before she can finish her apology, or make amends in some way, the girl’s eyes close, and she is gone, briefly, to a memory, or a world, that Cordis doesn’t witness. (Yet she was there, too.) She waits, breathing deep, trying to steady herself, when Glassheart’s eyes flutter open and she looks at her, something different in the gaze now, like she’s learned something. Cordis doesn’t know if the flutter in her chest is fear, or excitement. I’ll find a way to come back to you, she says, and Cordis doesn’t breathe, for a moment, because the sentence strikes home in a way little else has, it’s her, and how does she have any right to know this? She’s almost angry at her, as if this is somehow her fault, as if she chose to bear these things. “I still have your heart,” she says, and her voice grows thick, layered in grief, “but I’d give it back, if I could.” Then – “It hurts.” c o r d i s I’ll touch you all and make damn sure that no one touches me