"You can't play on broken strings, you can't feel anything that your heart don't want to feel, I can't tell you something that ain't true. Oh, the truth hurts, and lies "worse, so how can I give anymore? When I love you a little less than before?
Holding your picture, she studies the familiar planes of your face. The cheek she used to kiss. The eyelashes she used to feel brush against her skin. The curve of the chin into those soft, silky lips she used to love. It's a face she loved for days, months, years. It's a face she woke up to and kissed at night. It's a face she watched cry and laugh and frown and blush, soft rose against olive skin.
It's a face that left her, and caused countless tears when it did.
So why, now, does she feel nothing? It's been a month since they broke up, and every day had been hell. Even the mention of her ex's name put her into a foul mood. She couldn't stand seeing pictures of her.
So what changed?
She turns the page of the scrapbook, and comes across a picture of the two of them, not even a year ago. She remembers the day clearly, nearly down to the second. The picture was taken right before they'd left to see a play, and it featured the two of them, laughing, looking at each other with light and love and smiles on their faces. It's picturesque, a stunning snapshot of teenage romance.
She expects to feel a pain at that photo, but, to her surprise, her heart doesn't even twinge.
The only thing she feels is a soft sigh of once-sad silence, like dust settling from a storm. A quite, mute reminder of what could have been, of nights shared and words promised and promised broken.
It's resignation.
She's turning away, giving in. There's nothing left to grasp here anymore, nothing left to love and hold on to, and even if there, would she even want it anymore? Would she want her again, after everything that's happened? The pain she's gone through? The loneliness she's become accustomed to? Why bother with lifejackets when you're already drowning? The sun's set on their empire, she realizes.
If there were ever a moment for tears, it would be now. They're over. She tells herself. She urges herself to cry, to scream, to frown. To do fucking something. This is the moment for the breakdown. She braces herself.
But nothing comes. Nothing at all. There's a nagging silence inside of her heart, a peaceful contentedness that seems to taunt her. What? It seems to say. Surprised to find that you don't care? That you know you deserve better?
Too many thoughts, she sighs, places the scrapbook on the top shelf of her closet and wonders if there's anything on TV tonight she'd like to watch.