“Jasmine. It will always be Jasmine.”
And she falters, perhaps realising what she had said, how she had said it, her eyes widening in shock.
She reaches for him, a pitiful modicum of support, as if to soften the blow of her words, as if she hadn’t meant to say those words. But he understands now what he cannot be, how he’s entwined with someone who could never share herself with just one person.
(And he should deserve this, but he doesn’t want to.)
He shrugs out of her grasp– not violently, not like he wants to, because she doesn’t deserve his anger like this but also, she doesn’t fυcking deserve his anger at all. So he removes himself calmly, coldly.
“Thank you.”
And finally, “Goodbye.”
Three words. He’s not feeling vindictive enough to want those words to haunt her forever. He just hopes he can forget he’s said those words. Forget her.
***
The adrenaline was still pounding through his veins, inhibiting any feeling bar fear. He should’ve sat down and paused for a moment, let his own wounds be treated. He’s drenched in red; he’s not sure how many people’s bloods are mixed into the threads of his sweater. The pristine cleanliness now ruined, the stains near permanent. They won’t go away.
And yet, he’s unbothered. Something as trivial as clothes is far from needing concern. Not when his heart is shattered a few steps away, holding onto the last strands of hope, worry clouding every thought process. His heart, which refuses any treatment, as if her pain and blood could heal the broken bones of a bond that has since been snapped and retied.
(Strands connected back seamlessly, he notices, and can’t help but look at their own– his own, which are still sloppily put together.)
She doesn’t allow his touch, shrugging it off every time violently, aversely. He stops trying. Perhaps it doesn’t comfort her as he thought it would.
It’s another’s touch that brings her back to reality. A hand extended from someone he can’t bring himself to look at. He’s seething in jealousy. Burning. But there’s no strength in him, like she had ripped it all out of him and failed to take for her own either.
He doesn’t understand why she still cares. Hasn’t this very bond destroyed her entire life twice over? How can a bond be so pure without even the smallest sliver of resentment? He loves his siblings, he loves his parents, but some things they did still brings forth a slew of hateful thoughts.
He fears the answers to his questions will never be answered. He hasn’t even begun to ask them yet.
***
The disconnect is real, like standing in a field full of sunshine and cloudless skies only to face a barrage of raindrops, splattering warm water onto one’s skin.
He can’t put his finger on what was different. The obvious answer isn’t worth the mental stress. Anything else only makes him want to stitch his mouth together permanently. He doesn’t think she’d appreciate the words waiting to spill. They aren’t pleasant, not towards her sister.
But anger comes from a place full of love, right? He just wants her to not be hurt anymore. Even if she hates him, at least she’ll realise she shouldn’t be burned thrice.
Will you let her go?
He wants to ask.
Will you just forget all that she’s done to you?
He’s done his fair share too. At least he’s repenting…
Will you forgive her just like that?
“Take care of yourself.” Is what he lets himself speak. Every other word crumbles on his tongue. She’ll dismiss them anyway. He hates that he knows it. He hates that she wouldn’t change it.
And his throat constricts, tears threatening to fall, his jaw locked in anger at how her sister gets off scot free. All of this does not spread through until his fingers. He doesn’t let them show while he changes her bandages. She’s still fragile in his arms, still suffering her own wounds. Still worrying over someone miles away in proper care.
(Not once does she ask if he’s fine. Not once does she acknowledge the bandage on his forehead, on his leg.)
He really isn’t worth it, is he?
***
It’s the little things that he notices first, how she holds herself back now. Not from letting him touch her casually but from speaking freely. Like she’s biting her tongue every moment they’re together. Swallowing formless thoughts. He brushes it off eventually. Every what’s wrongs thwarted with her nothings, sometimes apprehensively, and then gradually, they become cold, her annoyance quite evident.
It’s easier to ignore because she doesn’t go cold anymore. The cold is painful, like frostbite, and he rather she gives him warm smiles.
Is that how it all starts?
(Is that how he started it all long ago?)
***
It shouldn’t have come from a second– a third person. Someone who was entirely uninvolved in their familial drama and yet is responsible enough to be connected.
Hidden truths are her nothings. Lies spun with his eternal devotion and her splintered love, her strings so thin because there were too many people to share it with. It’s why they snap eventually.
A door she left open unknowingly. A door she hoped he’d never ever find.
Is this what it leads to?
He thinks he’s felt pain, but pain would be sweeter. She’s plunged her hand inside his chest and squeezed the pounding mass of flesh. It’s just a placeholder. His heart had never felt any farther away. He doesn’t think he can reach her.
And why is the plastic apologies of her sister worth the life of his brother? How could she think it will ever be okay for her to never share the truth with him. Her sister had come to destroy his family, and she had just obliterated him.
Even a noiseless void would be better than here, him stuck to the ground, aimless. A part of him wants to preserve this lie; she’d worked so hard to acclimate her reformed sister into his family after all… but it doesn’t make up for anything. He’s being torn apart.
He sees red, blinded. He’s not sure if it’s real blood, with how hard he’d clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms. But these are the hands that took care of her, let her hold on to help her walk, tried to support her even when she didn’t need him.
(She never needed him.)
The tears burn his eyes.
***
It’s not as shocking as much as painful it was. Deep down, he probably expected it. Deep down, he probably knew how it will play out anyway. If not for the longing in his heart, the need to improve, to be better, maybe they wouldn’t be here at all.
It shouldn’t be as painful, but it hurts anyway.
***
It is what it led to eventually. Because this was never fixable. They were never fixable. He isn’t sure when reality started becoming an illusion. Perhaps it started when she began to hold her tongue, turning away from him instead of towards him. Or when they’d crashed into their near demise, a place of in-between where the hourglass flipped, sand falling from the sky. Maybe it was way before that, when he started the entire charade he now wishes he burned to the ground.
He has no hearts left. Hers he managed to hold briefly, now he can’t seem to touch anymore despite it being in plain sight. She is his. Something she avidly knows, and yet, chose to take for granted. It’s this thought that has him opening his mouth for the first time in a while. He releases the impulsivity he held back now, and it isn’t an impulsivity anymore really, not when her answer holds the last strand to his love.
“Choose. Now.”
(He should have done this earlier, he thinks.)
“Jasmine. It will always be Jasmine.”
***
It’s the last time he loved her. He doesn’t look at her, not really. But he’ll burn her. And even now she refuses to speak, say the things that she should’ve when he was still a hand on her shoulder. And he doesn’t want to understand anymore, why she holds her secrets to her heart. Why he wasn’t worth her. He’s beyond caring.
He’ll burn her.
He’ll burn his heart.
***
I choose you, Fateh.
He doesn’t hear.
(He never hears.)
Writer: SaoirseRZ
