How to Unstitch a Heart - Guide by a friend

There is this girl; we were friends.

She called herself but a shell of a human being; I called her a broken soul.

A sign much reminiscent of what I once knew of mine.

I learned to stitch and learned to mend the sharp edges. 

I gave her my needle along with some thread.

One step at a time, carefully so.

She needed time; it wasn't an easy fix.

I made sure to not risk ripping the seams on mine while guiding her whenever she asked.

We talked about beliefs and our personal moral compass.

Moreover, set boundaries, because I found it to be important.

Each time she fumbled with the needle, I didn't know what to do; it wasn't my rift to sew shut.

It wasn't my wound to heal.

But whenever we spoke, there it was. 

Carefully, between the lines, the quiet, choking expectation to be the medicine she required, to make the pain go away for her.

I like speaking with her even now.

But most of our conversations are painful now; she doesn't shout at me or curse me out.

However, she uses foul words such as slurs to validate herself, not caring that I mentioned my dislike for them.

As a kid, I was taught to handle words with care; they were magic, after all. A tool for mass destruction, my mother would say, but a tool nonetheless.

When we spoke, she would often forget that I was, well, me; she would curse me out, belittle and objectify me while expecting me to hold her and tell her that she is the most amazing person I know. When we talked, I was but a mere bug, only needed for when she was at an emotional low.

Like a twisted Cinderella story.

I didn't say anything; her momentary well-being was of more importance than a second of anger.

She didn't listen to me afterwards; she never did.

To show her my sincerity, I handed her my heart.

Daring to prove that trusting me wasn't a wrong choice to have made.

I hadn't noticed the shine of the silvery tableware already set on the table. Clumsy, the spoons were all over the place but nowhere near my place at the table. Lunch had always been a quiet affair. Dishes are best served in silence, or so I learned. She cooked the dishes that day. The taste was sour, bitter, but most of all bittersweet. It tasted like home, like one of those memories shoved in endless boxes and left in the darkest corners in the archive that is our mind.

It lingers, even now, months later.

One by one, she removed the stitches with a breakfast knife. A knife for which slicing through butter would be a difficult task. Too much force and too many empathy, words that lacked poison. The blade was still wet from when she drenched it in her glass of hard liquor. One by one came the seams undone; each was picked up by her and neatly placed onto a pile. 

She threaded the carefully collected bits of the once-seam and began sewing.

All I saw was how it had slipped off the table.

How it had fallen to the ground and more cracks had formed.

Her smile didn't warm me, but I wasn't cold either.

No sign of cold fury rushing my veins, blinding my sight. 

No vision covered in red.

No buzzing noise.

Nothing.

There is this girl, and I call her my friend. I think I know this will pass. That she will be but a fond memory of a high school friend. Someone I will only know by pictures from my graduation and old photo albums, she will see me and I will see her, and we won't recognize each other. We won't know us only by a small voice that tells our story, but right now it hurts. Not feeling anything because I expected it, only feeling guilty because I did, even though she promised me by her dear life it wouldn't happen. This time my stitches will be sturdier, and the next time they will be much harder to break.