subconscious

By Rhea Kapoor

I found her at the library. Curled up in a ball with the stains of tears on her cheeks. With tattered shoes and torn up clothes. With dirt in her nails and blood streaming from her lips. I found her clutching her bag harder than she seemed capable of, but the determination only showed in her fist, her eyes were shivering with the unwavering misery of a lonely child. Wailing in the hollow depths of her soul. She appeared as if she had lost all the color in her life, as if she lost her spirit to the devil.

The only movement in her body was of her slow and strained breathes. She was trying to calm herself. Forcing herself to have the ability to be composed and at peace. I heard the wheezing sounds of her desperation to feel good about herself again. The agony in her cries when she realized over and over again that she didn’t remember what it felt like when she was happy. I witnessed the torment in her tremors as her excruciating memories of loss and desolation played in her mind on repeat.

The more it played the more traumatized she got. I couldn’t look away even as her quivers turned to shudders and the quickened palpitations of her heart reflected the minute movements of her fractured body. I expected her to cry, to break into a never-ending fit of sobs. I expected her to start bawling her eyes out and release all of that pent up anguish that it so obviously troubling her. Yet, they never came- and that frightened her even more.

I followed her everywhere in hopes that she would find a way to put herself back together, that I would get to see her thrive in that happiness she so desperately desired. I followed her in the memories she couldn’t seem to let go of, even while they became the memories that I couldn’t let go of. I followed her everywhere, but ultimately nowhere. I found her at the library as she started to fall apart. Then when I met him, I never saw her again.