<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I. (Written May 10, 2024, just back posting to make my profile less empty :3)<br>II. For better quality/backstory/info, please visit my site <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/lanalightspeed">https://www.deviantart.com/lanalightspeed</a><br>III. Writing commissions and requests are open! Dm me on my main site or my insta; https://www.instagram.com/lanalightspeed/<br><br>I don’t think you realise. How could you? Every hint I drop, every move I make- it’s all part of the act, a move in the elaborate game that we’re playing.<br>I gaze into your eyes as you laugh. I’m your loyal shadow, going wherever you please; silent and obeying. You have a beautiful crinkle on the sides of your eyes when you smile. The warmth of your hand; your delicate, gentle hand, makes my arm feel like it’s on fire. I must look so deeply in love with you, but it’s probably because I am. If this doesn’t make someone jealous, I don’t know what will.<br><br>You’re talking to one of your friends, but we both know why we’re <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really </em>here. I can see him, sitting across the hall from us; shooting daggers with his eyes. <br>I should be thanking him, really. He’s the reason I get to hold your beautiful hand and run my fingers through your silky brown hair. <br>Except, he’s also the source of my pain; because I know, no matter how many times you say you’re over him, or how much you brush off his cold-hearted mistreatment, you’re not. Whenever we walk past; you hold my hand a little tighter, laugh a little louder. Just to show that you’ve moved on, you don’t care- but I know you do.<br><br>I didn’t expect, until you told me about this little plan of yours, how far I would go for you.<br>At first I thought that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and now I’m here realising that there’s not enough that I’m doing for you. <br>What kind of friend watches someone they love lie to themselves over and over. You say it’s good for you, to help you let go- to heal. This isn’t healing; it’s covering the cracks with gold paper. It looks beautiful but it doesn’t stop the water, slowly soaking through.<br><br>Your face is so beautiful, but your skin is creased with lines of worry. I’m not surprised. I dragged you away from your conversation for a ‘quick word’. You’re lying to yourself… But so am I. I can’t keep pretending. Pretending that I’m happy, pretending I have everything I want… I’m just so tired of playing pretend. <br>It’s only fair that you want to know why I’m quitting just when the plan is working, but it’s not an answer I’m ready to give yet.<br>Lies will save you, but only for a little bit. The more you live them, the more your old life starts to fade away, until you can’t go back- you can never go back. <br>I reach for your hand, but you snatch it back. The mask is off, there’s no point for you to act like you care anymore. You’re confused and hurt and you can’t seem to understand that I’m doing it for the both of us. <br><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;"><!-- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;"><!--[endif]--></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br><br>The roles have reversed. He’s by your side, standing tall and proud like a boy with a trophy, and I’m in the corner of the hall, watching. It’s always the same- this must be the 6<sup>th</sup> time you’ve got back together after weeks of fighting and lying awake at night, convincing yourself that you’re okay. It always starts the same, and will always finish the same. He seems okay, maybe he’s changed- but, I thought that last time as well. It’s a tragedy- but for what reason, I’m not sure. Because it’s always going to be like this- or because it didn’t always have to be like this? <br><em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It could have been different</em>, whispers my heart.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;"><!-- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;"><!--[endif]--></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br><br>It’s the 4<sup>th</sup> week in a row you’ve called me. Long after everyone has gone to bed, you’re up- sobbing your heart out while I listen, helpless, a prisoner in my own body. I grip the phone tighter to my ear. Maybe it’s my deep rooted jealousy that makes everything he does seem so villainous, or maybe it’s my head cautioning what my heart already knows. <br>I wasn’t sure you would forgive me after I ‘left you’, but you bitterly came around to the idea that maybe I didn’t want to live a lie. What type of lie I was living, you still don’t know. I thought what I was doing would help- that you would open up your eyes to the pain you’re causing yourself, but all I did was left you without a lifeline; a lifeline that he extended to you. One so tattered and torn that it was unthreading itself in the middle, but you didn’t have anything else to cling onto; better a broken rope than going under in a bitter ocean of lonely self-loathing. <br>You won’t hear any of my advice. You’re so sure of yourself- of him, of your future that you can’t see it any other way. He’s calling you, barefoot and helpless, to him over rough ground while he stands in shoes. I can’t stand it. <br>I wonder if this is the way it’ll always be for us. You call me, we fight, and you hang up. You call me, we fight, and I hang up. Playing on repeat like a broken record in a room nobody ever bothers to visit. <br><br><br>You’re back at my side, though I wish you weren’t. I’d rather see you with him, clinging to his arm, surrounded by his friends than next to me, trying to fix your running mascara. Mascara you don’t need. It feels like a prison visit. You only spend time with me until you’re back under his arm with him whispering in your ear to stay away from me.<br><br><br>I don’t think you realise. How could you? Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever know how much I love you…</span></p>
