Empty Pockets and Broken Hearts (I)

Heal thy wounds and cleanse my breath. Rid thy doom and pain in chest.

Thou will suffer as thy hath done. Unloveable lover thought thou one.

Guide ye now, so that thy won't break. Hear thy vow, so when thy wake.

Fate will serve what thou has due. Get thou'th deserve to speak thine truth.

Forgiveness comes to release thy free. Vengeance won, so mote it be...

***

No one enjoys talking about the grief that stems from a relationship ending. The numb emptiness of denial that conjures the wrath of bargaining and woe; after which comes unwillingly, a birth bred from the acceptance of unwanted change. You cannot help but feeling lost in the realms of unfinished business. Living like a ghost grieving over a death absent of the dying. As you separate your belongings, hunting for odd socks to be matched though forever a drift. Painfully cutting the red ties entangled between the two of you. A messy but bloodless death. A death where no funeral or vigil held. No candle lit, no wax melting. And with this loss come others. Whether it be acquaintances, work or a run-down home, feasting upon the agonising art of empty pockets and broken hearts.

To keep yourself sane, ever since that day two weeks and three days ago, maybe four, I'm losing count. You have done nothing but disassociate, returned, and left again. Mulling over all the times he wronged you, and how you allowed yourself to be wronged. Pitiful people believe vengeance is the true last dingy stage. A small creaking one with a single yellow spotlight, that once completed, receives a well earned standing ovation from an audience more petty than the performer. Vengeance...I am better than that. I must be better than that. I cannot stoop to his level just to gain a victory as payment for my own suffering. I cannot. I will not.

Although... if vengeance was ever written in the ink of justice, perhaps I could. I want him to know the torment I felt, the nightmares I now have, the sting that hurts within. I want him to know it and more. Maybe I am no better. Or maybe it is his poison lingering in the bloodstream, invading my body and every inch of my being. A hangover no water or a packet of counter pills can fix. I have to find myself again. I must be reborn. If that means I have to claw my way out of the wet earth below the grey tombstones, then so be it. I got out. I'm more powerful than I -

"Is this seat taken?" softly asks a strange slim lady, no older than me. I was so caught up in the troubles of my own mind everyone else became a figure in a moving painting. A dreary canvas of elderly ladies on their way to the bingo hall. Backs of bald heads vibrating against the wobbling cheap windows that rattle as the wheels run on along the rough road; the occasional ding of the stop button. Despite the empty chairs a few rows in front, she sat down anyway without me uttering a word. Her hair is darker than raven's feathers, thin fingers like skeletons, emerald eyes fixated on you. You who hates the very notion of eye contact.

"Time." She paused.

"Is a strange little thing that evolves slowly, yet once gone it appears so fast. As pain drags us down dirt roads and sharp corners, healing raises us above the ground... reborn."

"Sorry?" almost throwing up the question out. I can't help myself. I'm not apologising or begging her pardon. I am bewildered. Who the hell is this woman? And why does she speak like some witch from the woods? How else does she know, unless people can tell? God, can people tell? Fuck. I knew I should have put concealer today.

"Someone stole my light once. Took everything I owned. My time, my boundaries, my life. He used my face, my name and anything that was left for him to take because I never stopped him. Sometimes I wouldn't know it had robbed me until after. Turns out wild woman don't do so well in small cages."

Whatever this woman was smoking, I want to know where I can get some. She seemed off her tits, and yet, there is this unusual embodiment of warmth to her. It is bewitching.

"I can see the fire lies within you, the embers are just..." She examines me a some more. Her green eyes slump sombre, she raises her left brow and finishes her sentence "...covered by the shadows."

"How did you get through it?"

She leans forward closer, speaking in a low tone, not near a shout, far from a whisper, and says, "I stole his face." Looking proud of herself while backing away into her seat, she grins.

"Come again?" I have no idea what is going on right now. Am I dreaming?

"We should have never crossed paths, let alone stay together for as long as we did. We used to stay in this disgusting mustard coloured room with old army posters, framed I might add. You would take two steps and face a wall, turn, take another step and face the other wall. Take three steps and reach a door older than me. A bed, framed posters, and that fucking computer." Shit, when she swears, it penetrates my soul with a concoction of fear and admiration.

"He loved that thing more than me. If he ever loved me, that is. I doubt it. Men like that don't know how to love anything other than webbed pixels and fake-breasted women. He was a puppet master that took great pleasure in tugging on sensitive strings. His mask was a white screen, the keyboard, his leather gloves. He started many trends, I'm sure you've probably encountered without even realising it. I have lost count the amount of times I have heard a sound sample that came from," she paused, and said with great disgust, "Him."

"Did you really steal his face, or is that like some - figure of speech?" I bloody well hope it is.

She said nothing, just smirked back at me. Probably at my noticeable confusion. Was he dead? Is she a killer? I mean, I can sense she was something unnatural, bedded in the nature of the unexplained. I can feel it oozing off of her. Maybe beyond my comprehension, and probably for good reason. Good thing I'm sitting next to the exit door, hey?

"Do you know where this bus is going?"

"Wait. You got on a bus and don't even know where it's going?"

"We live our lives every day not knowing where we'll end up. There are many like us, not knowing where we are going. We just like to make sure everybody gets there." She smiles, while placing in my clammy palms an old ticket. The stop button dinged, jolting the bus to a standstill, throwing all the living bodies slightly forward and then back into our dusty, terribly patterned seats. I held the ticket so tightly the paper crunched. The date had faded, the bus number was nonexistent, and on the back was a handwritten address that was barely readable.

"What is--" she's gone. As had the old ladies who went off spending their pension in rigged slot machines. I don't think they even print bus tickets anymore. There are many like us...us. Who the fuck is us? When I get home, I'm going to sleep. Stole his face?

***

End of Part I

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