selle
I saw all the signs. I just never wanted to believe them. I wanted to believe that he still cared about me. But, now, I know he doesn't.
Things that make me feel alive:
cold nights outside, watching the stars
music that you can't help but cry to
a clean, good-smelling room
drawing something perfectly
writing a perfect paragraph
love
There was a small feather stuck in the binding of the leather book. I pulled it out and scrutinized it. It was silver with white at the tip. The feather I'd seen in a dream. I opened the book to a random page. It was beautiful. A sketch of a brilliant silver bird with a proud white chest and red around the neck. I make it my mission to find it.
In the stillness, I heard her labored breaths. Slowly, they grew farther apart, weaker. After a while, it was silent. I reached up and hit the ceiling above me. "Are you okay?" I whisper. No one replies. And I know I'm alone again.
I tried to sustain her. I tried to make her think positively. I made her list all the things that were good about her. But I couldn't stop the disease from progessing. Her hatred of herself, and life, grew. Slowly, she stopped eating. Then, she didn't go outside anymore. And soon, she wouldn't get out of bed. She wasted away, a hollow almost-corpse, rotting in her room. She didn't do much more than stare out the window, her skeletal face pale and blank. One day, she spoke for the first time in months. She told me she was finally free. She died that night, in her sleep. And I couldn't help her.
It was a miracle that she had survived past four months old. Her doctors had always told her parents she didn't have long to live. They had already picked out the tiny coffin she would have been laid to rest in, they'd found her a nice plot near her grandparents, and arranged services. They had prepared themselves for her death. But she lived. She thrived. With each day, she grew stronger and healthier. Somehow, though, the doctors were right. On the six-month anniversary of her birth, she died in her sleep.