The boy will not come tonight. She fears going to bed, for her bed is where she lies alone listening to the girl next door play music loud into the night, wishing he was here. She misses his chest, his warm chest that she rests her head upon, in summer nights in a bed where they both fit, instead of torn apart as they are now.


There’s a painting on the wall she did last year, before him, and the girl who stares down from it, she has accusing eyes. They ask in yawning tongues why she was left alone, alone with her skeleton goddess. The girl lies on the bed, shivering, missing him. He protects her from her past, pulling her forcefully with his strong, man’s arms into the present, and without him she sinks into the dark, screaming.


Photographs stare down at her from the yellow-brick painted walls of a university dorm room, photographs of people she’s not spoken to in months. Instead she lets him hold her, and when he cries it distracts her, makes her forget those yawning eyes of people from her past who do not want to let her go. They want her there with them, pulled down, screaming into darkness. And when he’s gone it aches, aches as she clings to the edge of her bed to hold onto reality instead of the nightmare she sees in dreams. The prospect of dreams, it scares her. Dreams are where the past rips open all your wounds, and blood runs from your chest to stain the carpet.


Those memories are scars upon her heart as she waits for him to call at three am. They are scars when she puts her glasses on and sees in the mirror the girl that she hates, all chubby face and mouse-brown hair, the girl she tried so hard to finally destroy. They are scars when she dances with friends in a club, every Wednesday evening without fail, and misses the girl she lost contact with.


They are not scars when he holds her to his chest, kisses her hair.


They will be scars the night before her wedding, when tradition dictates they must stay apart, and she will be unable to sleep, as she always is, without him by her side. They will be scars when he pops out of the room, leaving her for a moment with a crying baby, and terror will sweep through her chest as she knows that she cannot do it alone. She cannot function alone. They will be scars when she realises at last that she is old, and hates the sight of her face every morning, aged thirty five. They will be scars when he dies, and leaves her all alone, screaming, screaming in the void left by his absence.


They are not scars when he holds her to his chest, kisses her hair.


They will never be scars with him to brush against her hand with his, without knowing that that small gesture is every time saving her life, and pulling her from the pit of oblivion that awaits her once he’s gone forever from her grasp. When he’s there she looks forward to a life with him - when he’s gone there’s nothing left. Not death, not life, just waiting. She walks through her days all numb and terror, terror grips cold at her heart. She will fail. She will fail. She will lose everything, everything will fall apart and she’ll fail at her course and her new friends will decide they hate her and she’ll get fat and she blinks back the tears from her eyes and tries (fails) to remember that he’s coming back. He’s coming back.


Her room is cold. Her tears are cold on her cheek, blankets cold on her legs, and her heart cold in his absence. Cold. In silence she stares at the ceiling, waits, waits until the night takes her away to where the monsters lie, and for time to take her back into his arms where there’s no pain. The place where she is worth something. The place where her heart is held together in his hands, until he has to go and her hands, they tremble, drop it, and leave it there, broken on the floor.