flora
Flora finds she cannot soften in Kaisel's arms; even as he pulls her close, even as his voice presses no into her hair like it might anchor her, she stays rigid, hollowed out, all the warmth gone from her bones as if someone has poured cold water straight through her veins. She feels distant from her own body, from the familiar curve of fitting into him, from the instinct that has always had her reaching back without thought. Now there is nothing to reach with. She is glassy and numb, held rather than held, and the difference aches.
His words slide over her without finding purchase, and while they should land, instead they pass straight through, because the echo in her head is louder: I thought this was goodbye.
When he says the word room, something inside her jolts, sharp and unexpected, like a hand suddenly clapped over a ringing bell. Her eyes lift to his before she can stop them, surprise flickering naked and unguarded across her face. Not guilt. Not fear. Just..being caught off-balance by the fact that he knows. but then, of course he does. Her house has always been a map of her heart, every door a devotion, every wall built around someone she loves. She swallows, throat tight, and nods once, the movement small and heavy.
"Yes." The word falls like a stone. "I made it before everything," she says quietly, and everything tastes like salt and rust in her mouth. Before there had been fire, before things ended a second time, before choosing and re-choosing and believing she had finally learned how to love someone properly and well. "He’s never been in it. He doesn’t even know it exists." Her fingers curl in on themselves, nails pressing crescents into her palms as if pain might keep her from drifting away. "I didn’t know how to get rid of it. It was easier just to lock the door." A breath shudders out of her, thin and uneven. "That’s all." But it isn’t, of course. It never is.
Tears keep spilling, hot and relentless, but she doesn’t bother wiping them away now. The urge to vanish prickles at her skin again, sharp and tempting, her fingers itching at the gold ring as if she could slip sideways out of this moment entirely, leave only an empty outline behind. It would be so easy. "The room doesn’t matter," she insists, the words breaking with more force than she intends, because this—this—is the fault line. "It’s just a room." It was sentimental once, but now it was nothing more than dust and a rusty lock.
Her voice wavers, then falters completely as she reaches the thing that has been lodged in her chest like a splinter for years. "But his secret—" Her breath catches hard, a sob clawing up as the enormity of it presses in from all sides, too big to shape, too heavy to hand over cleanly. The secrecy. The weight. The way it rewrote her understanding of love and choice and consent without her ever realizing it was happening. The way keeping it had felt like devotion, and breaking it feels like betrayal all over again.
"Telling you was supposed to—" The rest collapses into a sound instead of words, a fractured breath that carries everything she can’t explain to someone who doesn’t seem to feel how enormous it is. She presses her lips together, shaking now, standing right in front of the man she loves and feeling more unseen than she has in a very long time. And it hurts in a way she doesn’t have language for yet.
His words slide over her without finding purchase, and while they should land, instead they pass straight through, because the echo in her head is louder: I thought this was goodbye.
When he says the word room, something inside her jolts, sharp and unexpected, like a hand suddenly clapped over a ringing bell. Her eyes lift to his before she can stop them, surprise flickering naked and unguarded across her face. Not guilt. Not fear. Just..being caught off-balance by the fact that he knows. but then, of course he does. Her house has always been a map of her heart, every door a devotion, every wall built around someone she loves. She swallows, throat tight, and nods once, the movement small and heavy.
"Yes." The word falls like a stone. "I made it before everything," she says quietly, and everything tastes like salt and rust in her mouth. Before there had been fire, before things ended a second time, before choosing and re-choosing and believing she had finally learned how to love someone properly and well. "He’s never been in it. He doesn’t even know it exists." Her fingers curl in on themselves, nails pressing crescents into her palms as if pain might keep her from drifting away. "I didn’t know how to get rid of it. It was easier just to lock the door." A breath shudders out of her, thin and uneven. "That’s all." But it isn’t, of course. It never is.
Tears keep spilling, hot and relentless, but she doesn’t bother wiping them away now. The urge to vanish prickles at her skin again, sharp and tempting, her fingers itching at the gold ring as if she could slip sideways out of this moment entirely, leave only an empty outline behind. It would be so easy. "The room doesn’t matter," she insists, the words breaking with more force than she intends, because this—this—is the fault line. "It’s just a room." It was sentimental once, but now it was nothing more than dust and a rusty lock.
Her voice wavers, then falters completely as she reaches the thing that has been lodged in her chest like a splinter for years. "But his secret—" Her breath catches hard, a sob clawing up as the enormity of it presses in from all sides, too big to shape, too heavy to hand over cleanly. The secrecy. The weight. The way it rewrote her understanding of love and choice and consent without her ever realizing it was happening. The way keeping it had felt like devotion, and breaking it feels like betrayal all over again.
"Telling you was supposed to—" The rest collapses into a sound instead of words, a fractured breath that carries everything she can’t explain to someone who doesn’t seem to feel how enormous it is. She presses her lips together, shaking now, standing right in front of the man she loves and feeling more unseen than she has in a very long time. And it hurts in a way she doesn’t have language for yet.
Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness
'Cause it's all over now, all out to sea
'Cause it's all over now, all out to sea
