Shards

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“You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough.”

There’s a mirror that cracks, shard by shard as it glows its last light, and it forms to ashes and green fields and wind and water and it morphs and glides to grayish blue glows and becomes life all over again.

Such was the allure of her eyes, her pretty, pretty eyes.

In a room secluded, only bathed by shadows and dark light, he reflects with a smile he could only dream to unlearn. Bound with a tightness that is never painful enough (always never painful enough), covered in gaps that could never be cinched by time, he remembers, always remembers, with quaint clarity, how eyes like hers could once haunt him in weeks.

And in a snap, he silently growls how he could never have that kind of glow, that kind of life, that kind of fire. Her passion. Her love.

For he rarely gave and always took, and takes what he always wants he did, would, always will. The fox crawls and silently creeps in a woman’s heart, grabs it by the pulsing heat and shreds it like panels screeching to dust. And always, he smiles, because he gets what he wants and has gotten away with it.

Until now. Until she came along.

Yet, he could not (could never) leave her.

Smile wider now, my dear. 

He had left another one behind, even for days on end, only that he could catch more of that life, of that fire in her. He had thought then, that it was that orb's doing, but as he continually looked at her with focused intent, he began to see with alarming quality that it was her soul that had captured it, and not the other way around.

And so he began to follow her, observe her, like an unwilling fox transfixed with such innocent prey.

Still, he never had (never never never) her. Could never. Should never. 

(He never knew the difference.)

So beneath it all, over and beyond the stars, the shards, the pain, the agony, the loneliness, he smiles the only smile he learns. It had been the only smile he has polished to perfection ever since he was born in a time worth forgetting.

If he had been any other man, he could’ve gotten anything he wanted, could’ve taken anything he needed. At certain times in his life, he believed in such a lie it filled him with greed to have more.

But he is a fox who continues to fly, and glide he does among grains borne of regret and listlessness and dreams he should have followed instead. But he instantly forgets everything because he lives for a day, never forever, never that long.

And so he left her behind, not once looking back.

This is the story of his heart, and what’s left of it.




(an incomplete piece that I could not get to finish. blame my muse for leaving me.)
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