♫ well, since my baby left me, i found
a new place to dwell. it’s down at the end
of lonely street at heartbreak hotel. ♫
his words twinge , worse than rigid daggers they are splinters burrowed decades over, his love lingering wooden shards swimming through slow distending arteries & besieging icebound heart. they yearn their purging, & she becomes a statue, frozen in time. ❛ ethan . . . ❜ tender name floats adrift, he wasn’t meant to see her. she should have been more cautious, proximity too close, catlike appearance too familiar. afflicted hues search concrete betwixt their feet, dior skirt flowing in night’s summer breeze in peripheral. like an artist’s dark oils masterfully spilled, long curled locks cascade over svelte shoulder as chin ascends & eyes raise. reaching toward, fingers trail like drifting phantoms along short strands clouding his view, if only excuse to touch him. he hadn’t aged a day, visage still rugged & handsome as ever. the enigmatic woman who was always so eloquent & quick with her words is rendered speechless, by his ghost’s presence before her, if only for a moment.
❛ stop. ❜ throaty contralto aches, ❛ i vanished because i had no choice. vanessa wasn’t the only one being hunted by something. my feelings for you were real. ❜ she didn’t forget, how could she? betraying them, him, it is a heavy cross she endures as decades pass, even still, he haunts her. ❛ you were never lost to me . . . you could NEVER be lost to me. ❜ backs of knuckles brush barbed jaw, limb befalling his chest in tiny fist & flattening as amber irises desperately search his. ❛ you weren’t supposed to catch me. ❜ or perhaps he was. fate is a cruel mistress, after all.
The disgusting breed of IRONY that shows itself now in particular, with Elvis still pouring all his melancholy in songs back at the grand hall inside, leaves the most disgusting taste of bitterness on the back of his tongue. It festers like a cesspool; like all his thoughts had those many years ago, after the source of Ethan’s heartbreak had departed like dew afore the morning sun. His jaw clenches with decades’ worth of resentment and his eyes gloss over until they’re no longer the welcoming browns they so oft are. Yet, just like that, she substitutes his ire with something worse by a tenfold: DISAPPOINTMENT. The former is so much more easy to define and process––––– which makes looking her in the eye after concluding his lengthy stare at the ground that much more agonising.
He should leave; should at least tell her never to even lay eyes on him and not to even think of touching him now––– should’ve gotten his hair cut this weekend and shaven his face. Each means equally little in this moment of unforeseen confrontation, for he revels in the ghosting of her fingers past his face. Eyes slip shut, for the fatal combination of her gaze set on him and the descent of her hand to his chest create a sensory overload which he can only block partially, and in one manner only. The WONDROUS SIGHT that is her face he comes to miss sooner than he’d care to admit though, resulting in a languid return of his focus to her face in lieu of the touch bestowed upon his person. ❝ ––––– And you weren’t supposed to leave without even ... some fuckin’ semblance of an explanation. ❞ The alleyway they stand in suddenly feels a lot colder to him. ❝ I’d’ve given you anythin’; all you had to do was SPEAK UP. ❞