[private] love is for fools who fall behind, ana

[kensley]

i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshiped at the altar of losing everything

How fiercely he wants the heart to stutter back to life.
How it aches – figuratively, of course, for he feels so little now – to know that she can touch him now and it will not set him ablaze. She can touch him and the heart will not beat new.

She does not touch him, though. Instead, he is left to watch as the eyes shift from ice to fire. And he loves her for it. Oh, how terribly he loves her. She knows. Without him having to tell her, without him having to cough the dust out of his throat to explain exactly what has changed. He wonders if she can smell the death on him the same way the others could. If it was obvious just by looking at him. He had not begun to rot. Miraculously, he had not lost anything other than his pulse, his hunger, his thirst. But they have all known. Something in the eyes, perhaps, a kind of dullness he cannot see.

What happened, she asks. He does not immediately know how to answer. He does not immediately want to answer. So much has happened, he thinks. So much they had not bothered to talk about on that day in the meadow when they’d found each other and his heart had sighed, having found its home again.

He can feel her anger. He can feel it as if it is a part of him, too. Even before she touches him. The hide does not quiver, no matter how desperately he wishes it would. The body does not respond to her, only the psyche. And the psyche, the soul, it does not want her to pull away.

“I thought I could fix it,” he murmurs. Had he really believed that, though? Or had his want to believe it been enough? He’d gone without stopping to think. He’d gone without hesitation. He does not know to what he is referring. What had he been trying to fix? The heart, perhaps. How it had struggled to beat beneath all that pain.

“I thought I could fix it, but I couldn’t,” he says. But there is no self-pity. There is a rueful smile, a mournful shake of his head. “I was a fool to think I could.” 

i'm finding all this well-worn sadness i never knew i kept
and i still chase you into heartache every time you take a step