The darkness came in between flashes of the day time, interrupting visual snaps of her routine that drew paths in her vision. It reflected rainbows like a prism, holding her hands back from trying to close them over her eyes. Because as much as she wanted to block out the evanescent designs, she couldn’t. Their fleeting bodies held her attention just long enough for her to keep her hands by her sides, and even though they disappeared after a while, their memory could tide her over until they appeared again. She found a place to go in the inbetween, inside her mind and under her feet. Where she would escape to grass fields and light encompassed meadows, while her body would sit clumsily in a bathtub she had outgrown years ago. And even as the fluorescent tubes above her flickered and threatened to drown her in darkness, she didn’t fear because she had been there before. She could remember what it was like to reach out and only cusp shadows in her hand, and to remember that she could fight as hard as she could but the sun would still rise, and the remnants of the night would be only what she held in her fingertips.

She wasn’t an introvert. He, nor had anyone else in her life, been able to touch her under her skin. The veins in her hands traced the paths of her stress, pulsing through her fingers, to the fingernails she constantly dug at her skin with. She was living, breathing, fighting against her skin, her casing, and her nerves plucked and shocked her while her eyes flashed planes of blue, grained swathes of colors. Her selfish identity had left her long ago, but something much more cruel had taken its place. Her spine burned every time he ran his fingertips up her torso, caressing the dips in her skin and planting feathery, pink kisses on her stomach. He didn’t see the marks where she had pinched the curves on her hips, nor did he notice the scars from where her nails broke the skin. He couldn’t feel the streams of blood that snaked down her body and pooled under her toes. He couldn’t reach out and touch her tears as they diluted the red pain that wet her feet and turned the floor pink. No, he couldn’t touch her soul and he couldn’t hear the core of her bones as they grinded against each other.
He didn’t know that she hated herself. More than anything in the world. He had loved her in such blindness that he, too, had become blind. Her beauty had disturbed his peace, and he found that he could not live without her. And she cried, every day, because she could not live with him. She shouldered the guilt and tragic shame that not only would she hurt him, but she would not feel a thing when she did it. That the woes of heartbreak and sadness had ceased to affect her long before they even met. Even when he would hold her all night, and even when he would kiss the back of her neck, and bring her to the peak of her physical sanity, she could not appreciate him. And it was her absence of pain, her void of emotion and reciprocity, that made her so lonely.
She could see that everyday, her reflection would not let her live. That the girl in the mirror was begging her to cut a line down herself and finally let someone see her. What lived there, she didn’t even understand. But she did know that under her skin, something was nurturing its wings, waiting for the opportunity to fly away.