My movements are jerky, automated; my brain creates a cleaning, packing robot out of me as my thoughts are elsewhere, dramatic, threatening to overwhelm and drown out all the world. My hands stack shoes (automatic, right on top of left, black with black, brown with brown - where the hell did that one come from? Oh, there's the other. Not mine. Add to the stack anyway). Thinking, my shields raised in a futile attempt to lower the stress level of center-ness.

Yet again, in the middle. In between those I care for, knowing and speaking and never reaching the heart and conciousness to smack anyone hard enough with my words.

Thwack. Noise and face skittering across memory. I've seen his cheeks reddened by my hand before, only to excite him; never to come to the realization of how incredibly blind (while still seeing perfectly, undenyingly) he is. I could never strike him hard enough for that.

She's just as sightless, though. I don't believe he won't hurt her. He can't change fast enough to save them, and her faith is the faith of one with a final desperate hope. She deserves better than to fall. I'd give her wings; if I could only save her, perhaps then my life would be worthy of saying - "Ah! She has done something to be praised!" She sacrifices herself unknowing; must love always cause death to let us breathe?

Yes, I know. I've been there. My hands stop; clench painfully. I shove a drawer shut with the palm of my hand, knuckles white. My heart bleeds still; the thorns encircling it close tighter, digging in and bristling out at the world. Ominous whispering "We will hurt those who harm her." And yet, my faithful thorns, they cannot always protect me. Even they may be deceived; and your flesh clings in bits to them, tiny parts of you still with me. You forced your way past them, touched my heart, and I could not (would not?) live and love. I drove you away, bleeding you cut by cut til you finally tore yourself apart to leave. There's no hope for a heart that everything you poured into it only bled out the holes struck through it by other hands.

I get up slowly from the closet floor. Sit lethargically in this chair, my aching body ignored and overrun by my brain, racked by angry thoughts and old memories, feeling a little more fucked up than usual.

She would sacrifice her heart to hope that he will change, let her life trail away to wait. I would not sacrifice myself for you. So I killed my heart just to breathe.

I take one of thoses deep breaths. Let it out. Stare at the screen and wonder what the fuck I'm thinking, what I'm doing; why do I have to watch everything and everyone around me crash?

Yes, sometimes we have to die just to breath.

Does it matter anymore?