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now it's just dirt under my fingernails.Novak carried an umbrella with her everywhere for nine years. And when he asked her why, she told him, "Ever since my dad died, sometimes it feels like the sky is falling."

That was six months ago, and he still catches himself checking for cracks between the clouds when it rains.

-

vii.

He likes to remember her eyes. The left was blue and the right was brown, like two people in one, and faded, like old photographs.

But then he remembers that old photographs are the only things she exists in now, and his office will get so small that he needs to go outside to breathe.

-

vi.

He wanted to be gentle, even if he couldn't think of a way how
eight things about growing upeight

I told my brother I was going to be a fairy when I grew up. Or a bird, or sprite – something with wings so I could touch the clouds.

I learned that fairies weren't real when I was six, after I tried to jump off a parking structure to see if I could fly.

That day I also broke my leg in three places and saw an angel's face in the clouds. (And don't tell anybody, but sometimes I spend all day looking for him.)

seven

My neighbors back in Denver had a son who was a schizophrenic. After he went off his meds for the third time, he painted the windows red and told his wife she had to abort their baby because it wasn't human.

A year l
a picture of a plane.The day her daddy got sent away, the whole neighborhood fluttered with closing curtains and eyes watching through cracked doors. His wife called it a mistake, the cousins called it rape and said he was a pedophile.

And she just kept dipping her fingers into paint and dreaming about kites and the eyelashes on dolls, because she didn't know what any of those words meant.

A year later, he came back, and she washed the sidewalk so he couldn't see that she was drawing their secret in light blue and petal pink chalk.

-

"Those are nice pictures, baby," her daddy would tell her, but she hated it, because he always sounded sick, and he would rub h
numbering the steps.I'd like to count the number of times you fucked me over, but I only have ten fingers and toes.

-

I never mentioned this but I really should have.
Because it was so hard that you were blowing me off, especially after the third/fourth/fifth/fourteenth time.

Or in September, when your eyes could look everywhere but mine – when I finally stopped telling you, because I knew you weren't listening.

Oh, and you killing yourself last April. There's that.

(Your note said: "Tell Scarlett I'm sorry." And oh God, Charlie, please believe me, I tried so hard to make it right, I did.)

-

Fourteen days, two hours, and fifty-nine minutes: how long
The Rainfall KidThere are raindrops on his fingers—a glistening cluster of perfectly silver droplets that read like some shining, ethereal roadway map—the night that he comes for her with the thunder of a summer storm rolling forward on his footsteps. The low rumble of it jolts her from a book induced slumber, the cover rough beneath hands and the jumble of last-read letters blurring on the underside of blinking eyelids as rain begins to fall. Although it's almost been longer than memory will allow, she knows that there is no mistaking the sudden upheaval of the outside world for anything other than his arrival—after all, it hasn't stormed in
short-term memory.and you'll never forget:

When you realized that everybody dies alone.

When you didn't take your eyeliner off one night, so in the morning
your eyes would look as hollow as you felt.

When you spent a year blacking out the sad endings in your books.
(When you wished that life could also work like that.)

When you learnt that "We need a break" means "I am going to break your heart."

When you fell in love with the stars, and the way he says "us."

When he told you, "More than just a long time."

The first time you hung up to the sound of your father laughing.

When you walked home from a party in January, and couldn't remember
if you were
queen of nothing.what I've learned:

I still remember singing in my room when I was six, and having my mother come down the hall and slam the door so hard that the windows shook.

Her nails hurt when she scraped the tears off my face. "It doesn't matter what you want," she'd always tell me.

Like, when that drunk driver swerved and hit her car – I didn't want her to leave me, and it didn't matter.

Once on vacation I bought a pair of fuzzy leather heels for two hundred dollars, and when I wore them to dinner, I found out that

1. "Suede" is a fancy word for "fuzzy leather."

And 2. Good things don't last: That night my cousin told me that she thought 135
you never knew. Every summer in Munich the rain used to fall in buckets – tepid, luminescent rain, like crystal slices, sluicing through the green trees leaves and loosening the earth around the mountains so much that the smaller towns had to evacuate. It slicked the city streets and made the sky as gray as them. I went out every day while the adults sat indoors around fireplaces to complain about the wet weather, and lied and said it was only because I liked to watch. My mother would shake her finger every time I dripped warm rainwater into the house and my brother would warn me in whisper that if I stayed out too long, I could drown.

I only half-li
the girl and the motherwhen the girl is the born, she is one of two.
when the girl is born, the mother has four sons and one daughter.
but she promises to love her new son and daughter anyway
because that is what good parents do, and a good parent, the mother certainly is.

the girl is healthy and strong,
the strongest of the family, and makes everyone laugh when she laughs.
the family is already large, and they agree that she and her brother are a welcome addition.

for the first three years, the mother and the girl do not separate.

the girl does not cry until she is six.
and does not stop until she is nine.

when the girl is good, the mother smiles.
when
and then, you changed.For years, you used to ask me what you were to me.

And I would always say, "Nothing," until you finally understood that there was nothing you could do that could ever hurt me.

before.

When we were children, there were no monsters under your bed. Just dead frogs and lizards from the pond on your doorstep.

You asked your sister, "Why do things die?"

"Because death is a part of life," she told you with a loving hand in your hair and a calming hug waiting for you later. But her eyes pinned me over your shoulder.

She never told you it was because Erik wouldn't stop killing them.

-

Flowers die, too. So I flattened them in your schoolbooks f
SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki
a smear of electronsif there was ever a state known to be corporeal, i was far from it.

my mother brought me wrapped in a black and red striped bandana because the cab had an accident and she couldn't afford to lose more blood just for my grandparents to see my face when i was born. the doctor strongly refused to let her but.. where else do you think my insanity comes from?
they weren't pleased, they weren't shocked, they just stared at a ruffled, discarded piece of harshly dyed cloth and failed to understand what she was trying to make them see. they shuffled and dropped me but never knew they did, even when the thud echoed and stopped my virgin heart.

thoug
tar-stained sleeves and nicotine breathfor the first time in sixteen years, three months and twenty eight days, i heard a hum from my chest, instead of tobacco fireflies.

it hurt to move because every joint flickered and cracked with momentum of the slight embers at the end of your cigarette. reinforcement sucks.
i tried to let go of the silence that strangled us together when i was too weak to break away.
[that's all i ever used you for, you little bitch]
i needed to get over one so i used you till i could. too bad you got to throw me away first like little bits of inhaled nicotine. [i can still smell it in the air]

**

"you're just as irritating as you used to be," my foreh
Simon Says Go Off YourselfThere's a half-empty bottle of wine on the coffee table. Blackstone. Cheap. I know it's cheap because it gave my dad nausea last night. Cheap wine does that to him. Why he drank it, I don't know. He's such a dumbass sometimes.

Lindsay, his new fiancée, sits on the couch behind the coffee table in her black nightgown, a lit cigarette between her fingers. She's not supposed to smoke in here. It's bad for my asthma. It's also against regulations. But of course, she doesn't care.

She passes awkward glances at me between each hit. I stand in the threshold to the front room, my arms folded, staring down at her, not knowing what to say or do.
red leaves and Robert Frost.When I was young, my virginity was sacred. Entire religions pray over it and my father bought a gun so long as it meant protecting it.

We throw away half of our refrigerator each week – meanwhile, 24,000 people die of starvation every day.

Hardest part is, sometimes wasting things can't be helped.

At the bus stop, before I could drive, boys would ask for my phone number while I tugged up the neck of my shirt. Asked me how old I was while I crossed my legs under my skirt.

I told them I had a boyfriend even when it wasn't true, because they'll always respect another man more than my disinterest.

Hearing "I love you" for the first time
Browse More Like This

More from ~colbalt-rain

eight things about growing upeight

I told my brother I was going to be a fairy when I grew up. Or a bird, or sprite – something with wings so I could touch the clouds.

I learned that fairies weren't real when I was six, after I tried to jump off a parking structure to see if I could fly.

That day I also broke my leg in three places and saw an angel's face in the clouds. (And don't tell anybody, but sometimes I spend all day looking for him.)

seven

My neighbors back in Denver had a son who was a schizophrenic. After he went off his meds for the third time, he painted the windows red and told his wife she had to abort their baby because it wasn't human.

A year l
numbering the steps.I'd like to count the number of times you fucked me over, but I only have ten fingers and toes.

-

I never mentioned this but I really should have.
Because it was so hard that you were blowing me off, especially after the third/fourth/fifth/fourteenth time.

Or in September, when your eyes could look everywhere but mine – when I finally stopped telling you, because I knew you weren't listening.

Oh, and you killing yourself last April. There's that.

(Your note said: "Tell Scarlett I'm sorry." And oh God, Charlie, please believe me, I tried so hard to make it right, I did.)

-

Fourteen days, two hours, and fifty-nine minutes: how long
now it's just dirt under my fingernails.Novak carried an umbrella with her everywhere for nine years. And when he asked her why, she told him, "Ever since my dad died, sometimes it feels like the sky is falling."

That was six months ago, and he still catches himself checking for cracks between the clouds when it rains.

-

vii.

He likes to remember her eyes. The left was blue and the right was brown, like two people in one, and faded, like old photographs.

But then he remembers that old photographs are the only things she exists in now, and his office will get so small that he needs to go outside to breathe.

-

vi.

He wanted to be gentle, even if he couldn't think of a way how

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was it easy?

:iconcolbalt-rain:

i.

    When I met you, I would only bring tragedies up to the rooftop, or down to the street corner, or to the bike cage. You asked me if any of them were true.

    "You make the saddest stories so beautiful with that pen," you said, on the same day that we held hands for the first time and I found out you smoked.

    It's all we are now, though. Just more depressing words from my pen. You loved my writing that much; and that was more than me, and it ruined us.



-


iii.

    The January before you turned twenty-one, you told me you were afraid to become an adult. "I don't want to be somebody a child will hate."

    You had always smelled like peppermint, cologne, and the truth, and it made me so sure when I told you, "You won't be. You're different."

    And hey – it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.



-


v.

    We spent the summer talking about baby names and our house in Colorado. You wanted a daughter and I wanted four boys, and one of them had to be called James.

    It was October when you asked me for your jacket back, and it was about two days after that you decided you didn't love me anymore.

    "I'm not leaving you," you told me.

    But you weren't staying. And, after you were gone, I decided to never have children because I really wanted a son named James, and he would make it impossible to forget.



-


iv.

    Sometimes I'd ask about your mother. I'd ask if she knew about prison camps in the Congo.

    Once you'd stopped talking about what she did when you were five/six/eleven/seventeen, you'd pull me closer and say, "Between her and those camps? There's no difference."

    But there is now. The difference is, I'm sorry about things I shouldn't be. And you're sorry about nothing.



-


vi.

    It took a few years, but I need caffeine now because of you, and we both stepped out of the same coffeehouse on the same Monday.

    "Tell me something," I said; and God, I tried not to cry, I really did. "Was any of it real?"

    And you just said no, and I never saw you again.

    (Your answer hadn't changed. But the way you said it, and the way you smelled, had. And it hurt, okay?)



-


ii.

    You told me your name was Drew. I lied and said mine was Victoria.

    It gets me sometimes – that you knew I used to crush mayflies under my thumbs because I wanted to feel big, but you never knew my name.

    Meanwhile, I knew yours, and I never understood you. Like how you fell off of your cousin's motorbike when you were young but you didn't break anything.

    Or, how you woke up that one day, and all of your feelings for me were just gone.



-


vii.

    I think they expected me to get upset when I found out about your wife and daughter. They expected me to rush right over to the morgue, where they told me you were weeping in front of a pane of glass and asking for me.

    But I was your second option before – and you'd never once cried for me, not like I did – so I all said was, "Please don't."

    I haven't put the battery back in my phone. Also, they all expect me to pick up my pen, so I won't.



-




      You gave up on us and me, I just gave up.

624

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:iconcolbalt-rain:

was it easy?by ~colbalt-rain

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saying all that cute stuff and then just walking away like it was nothing?

Sometimes I think, if I could, I would be a heartbreaker. I'd be the biggest, meanest bitch around.

Because hurting people is so much easier than being the one hurt.
©2012-2013 ~colbalt-rain
Category: Literature / Prose / Fiction / Romance / General / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

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July 18, 2012
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:iconautumn-spirit:
~autumn-spirit Mar 9, 2013
wow.. this is my favorite poem of yours so far. I love how you brought in the part about Congo. It's like emotional, yet intellectual as well. Brilliant :)
Reply
:iconcolbalt-rain:
~colbalt-rain Mar 14, 2013  Student Writer
Oh man, thank you so much. :heart:
Reply
:iconactsofart:
~Actsofart Aug 10, 2012  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
this is really good!
sad but good.
Reply
:iconcolbalt-rain:
~colbalt-rain Aug 10, 2012  Student Writer
Thank you! :love:
Reply
:iconqueebi:
~Queebi Jul 25, 2012
Oh Literator, Queen of Few Words and Much Emotion.

That's your new title whatever you're stuck with it sucks to be you. cx

This was, as I'm coming to love from you, very tragic. And beautiful. I don't even see it as you really understanding pain - though I have no doubt you do - and transferring it to words. I can also feel your empathy, your... your understanding of hurt. The understanding is so vast and that's why I think you don't even need many words to convey what you want the audience to feel. You just /get/ it, and it shows.
Reply
:iconcolbalt-rain:
~colbalt-rain Jul 25, 2012  Student Writer
That's...quite the title.
I like it!

I write too many sad stories, but I can't help it. D: I aim for realism (except maybe held under, where I made a girl come back to life just to die again.) And sadly, I do. I understand pain inside and out, upside down and every which way, more than anybody my age should. But I know I'm alone on that, and that's what's truly sad. But thank you, Bianca. :heart: I appreciate your wonderful feedback.
Reply
:iconqueebi:
~Queebi Jul 26, 2012
*bows*

I don't think you should want to help it, no matter what you write. You write what you want to, and that's that. That... is a very interesting concept for a story. o_____o

For the record, I don't think anyone's really alone in anything. But I understand.

Not a problem!
Reply
:iconsugapieissofly:
*SugapieIsSoFly Jul 25, 2012  Student Filmographer
I love seeing you experimenting with different styles. The short stanzas make each line more powerfully driven and they really push everything forward in a pleasing way.
Reply
:iconcolbalt-rain:
~colbalt-rain Jul 25, 2012  Student Writer
I love this style. So, so much, it's ridiculous. And thank you again. :)
Reply
:iconcaeruleanluminosity:
~CaeruleanLuminosity Jul 21, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
This is so impossibly beautiful .. You really have a knack for writing .
I can kinda relate to this ff ..
Reply
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