end.

End.

Maybe I used to believe I'd never feel strongly, crazily enough to want this. It was something I just couldn't imagine myself wanting, I reflected when I gazed inside me and saw what I thought was my heart in bare honesty. That's what I believed, before I discovered how emotions truly worked, how little control I actually held over what and who they chose.

Then, maybe I used to believe there'd be no problem in parting, because any bond I entered would be simple enough for me to disentangle myself from. That’s how I thought my life would go eventually. That's what I believed before I met someone whom I could not simply leave, the way I swore I could before.

When the ball ends and the clock strikes twelve, turn away, turn so he cannot see you, and say goodbye. No smile. Race down the glittering staircase with the night in your wings. Not another glimpse, not another song. Leave no glass shoe to find you by.

Maybe I used to think that, on that last night before we parted ways, it would be so easy for me to say "it's alright" and maybe even "good luck with life" and let him slip away without my heart tearing to pieces.

And I would go my own way. The doors would pass, the doors all around me. And the lights would dim behind as the double-doors grew further, the sounds of young women and men drinking themselves crazy upon stories even sadder than my own. As my footsteps echoed down a corridor too hollow to breathe in.

How silly, now--it's barely begun! I don't even know if we'll be together till then.

But I feel we will. And let's say we do.

And then I wonder, who will hurt more?

End. Sometimes it's better that way. Sometimes it's the only way. Hope as we might, in the colour of stars unfathomable distances away, sometimes a bond must be broken so new ones can form. Holding on too hard is only going to make it hurt even more.

This is not a fairy tale. Sometimes the stories fool you to think there is more hope in the world than there really is, than can ever be. They fool you to believe you can change even an iota of it.

I would leave for university somewhere. Learn to draw houses larger than any I'd ever own. Learn to write symphonies I couldn't play. It would all end when that day was past, when 12 midnight soared by in the night rain and the curtains finally closed. I don't know where he'll go. I'm afraid to wonder. But it will end, without exception. Too vast a distance in between.

But then, I can't stop hoping.

Maybe I used to think I could tear myself from a relationship without destroying a part of myself with it. Well, now I know I can't. I wait and keep quiet inside myself because I can't let this affect the life of the present. I wait and hope, and only speak of it in the silence of written words, in corners like this where it's safe and not so painful. But then it lingers, this denial, this fear that never goes away.

The tears still come.