January 15, 2022

Once upon a time, in a land not so far as you think from home, there lived a girl. When no one was looking, she grew into a woman. One night, her father came to read her a bedtime story, and she was gone.

Long gone.

She was a girl no one noticed who grew into a woman no one noticed.

So she fled.

Out the window of the cottage, she poured herself into the night. She took nothing but the pieces of heart she could find scattered across her room, shoved into her pockets, careful not to cut herself on the edges. She saved them like cyanide teeth, as deadly weapons—no one breaks her heart the way that she does. No one would kill her off but her.

When her feet hit the ground, she bent, double-knotted the laces of her Dr. Martens, then stood straight, staring stonefaced into the dark. Her exhale, grey clouds against the night, brought affirmation—there might be a happy ending, but only when their backs were turned, when no one would notice.

Through the dark, a glimmer, a sliver of a moon come to Earth. She runs toward Him as if content to do so forever, but through the trees, He watches and makes the moon move.

Farther… farther…. still more.

He sees her, soft as glass, transparent with something like hope, stop to catch her breath. Bent at the waist, hands on knees, bearing entire atmospheres through her lips. A Cheshire grin across the face of the moon as she begins again and the night swallows her path, each piece of heart a breadcrumb disappearing behind her.

And still, He watches.

And she, oblivious to being seen--seen through--chases the ever after.