Darkness had a way of forcing her to re-think her surroundings, forcing her to rediscover herself, forcing her to move when she thought it best she stand still. She inched her hands across the wall in a series of movements that were exaggerated and long. Her white skin was pale, thin…the veins that pulsed beneath the surface were unusually exposed, and crept inside her body–folding out into designs that were interesting to follow and sometimes infinitely disarming to anyone near enough to pay attention. She found the switch and and steadied it against the tip of her finger while pressing upward; slowly enough to adjust to what she knew would be a sudden jolt to her reality. The light flickered and settled in, swallowing the blue-black night in one big gulp.

She sat on the floor and wrapped her hands around both knees, rocking back and forth, all too aware of the shadow that was mocking her in the corner; pressed up against the peach paint she hated, and melting onto the floor. She had to consider why this never seemed like her life. Why no matter how hard she tried, she was never a part of anything that happened around her.

She opened the letter paying careful attention to the bubblegum pink paper-lined blue, and the writing that was so old now it seemed never to have belonged to her in the first place. She remembered finding the box under his bed. Sixteen years of her letters, and a calendar marked with every day he spent with her, right down to the words that had been carelessly spoken between them. He had loved her for so long, it didn’t seem right to argue against it.

He knew her. He knew the reasons she didn’t sleep at night, or answer the phone, or open the door, not even when she expected it. He knew…He knew everything and loved her, still.

But her heart was no longer sympathetic–It pressed hard against her chest in a steady string of thuds. It wanted more than a routine, more than the mundane middling of suburbanite apathy. It wanted to feel.

It wanted to feel something.