you can hear when the heart stops - kensley

[kensley]

i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose He feels her before he sees her. But then, he always did. There had always been something in her gravity that shifted something vital in the cavern of his chest. And perhaps he has been foolish to carry the memory of her but it is one of the few he has that has been worth carrying. Time has stripped it of its color but it remains just the same, stowed away in his head or his heart, he’s never been sure which. He had loved her. He has never been more sure of anything. In the quiet moments, the placid calm that they’d shared amidst all that chaos. She had been fierce and alive and she had not needed him to love her but he’d done it anyway. He had not expected to ever see her again. He had contented himself with committing her to memory. Perhaps he has imagined the fleeting flicker of recognition. Maybe she will continue on her way, skirt past him, carried by the shadows that tangle themselves around her. But the useless heart in its ribbed cage aches with its want for her to stop. They are both changed. Her magic is greater, he thinks, and there is a kind of darkness that seems to resonate from the very center of her. But he is not deterred by it. Because it was her darkness that he loved. He has never seen it good enough reason to turn away from her. And he? He has been drained of all of his warmth, plunged into a cold world he does not yet know how to navigate. He is not the same man who’d stood by her side for brief glimpses of time, who’d loved her fiercely but cannot remember now if he’d ever told her. He is not the same man who’d raised their daughter and set her free in the world. He does not deserve to call himself by the same name even. But he smiles and it is that same placid smile he’d always worn for her. The only difference now is that it does not reach his eyes. “Ana,” he says in a way that sounds like relief, as if he’d been expecting her. As if he’d known they’d find their way back to each other some day, even when the opposite is true. shattered son of jarris and plumeria