Melancholy Hill

A Story by Faye

Ramblings.

“I love you.”

I temporarily pause in the gravity of those three words. My automatic response of ‘I love you too’ paints to a full stop, the curtains of my ears quietly open for any vibrations of hope to quake through my ears and down to my soul. But I know all that I am waiting for is for any subtle hints that my entire universe is seconds away to shattering into tiny atoms of dust; that I better turn my fixated gaze from my back and to my chest so I can keep you from driving a stake through my helpless heart.

“Don’t say that,” I tell you. I want to tell you that your words have chipped my soul until there are no more pieces to break. But all I ask is that you refrain from committing another linguistic murder tonight and to stop yourself from evolving from my lover to my killer. “You don’t love me, you love her. Everything is for her and will always be for her. So, please, don’t say that.”

“But I love you.” You’re trying to urge me to take a leap of faith into your words but I can’t bring myself to tell you that I’m terrified of heights. You’re trying to exchange one signal with me but there are crows plucking at the black wires of my furrowed brows and you only receive a dial-tone, an incessant beep until the line eventually disconnects similar to the continuous beating I heard of my own heart until it eventually forgotten its own rhythm.

So please don’t say that. Don’t you dare allow those acidic words to pound against my naked flesh as carelessly as the way you planted purple-stained kisses onto my wary heart. All those times you claimed your loyalty to me, you were bowing to her in utmost respect and love and every other damn adjective to describe the lust you felt for her. So don’t say that, please. I dig my nails into your epidermis as if I am scavenging for the golden treasure of your blood-stained bones. You already ripped out my beating heart from the chambers of my cautious soul and placed it on top of the filthy brown patches of Melancholy Hill, so what more can you possibly do? All the damage has been done and all I wish is to stone the hands of time until time eventually freezes forever.

But then this heartbreak will ache until the end of eternity approaches.

And I don’t want that. Anything but that.