She turned, ash falling hot on her fingertips.
She turned slowly to the sound of that voice. She didn’t want to meet the gaze. Didn’t want to square her body up to that person’s. Yet she didn’t want to retreat. The coldness from stone seeped into her spine as she slowly took a breath.
One.
Two.
Three.
The devil always was in the detail and she had met her match.
Except she hadn’t. She felt beneath the gaze of that person.
What am I?
I am nothing, a voice said in her mind.
Anger quickly followed. The acidity burning her throat as she heard her own mind describe herself.
I am not that, she wanted to scream. I am not that.
It had taken her a long time to build herself back again, one bone at a time. Her backbone had been crumbled for a long time.
Such a long…
Time.
She didn’t want to feel that way again. She didn’t want to feel that way again. Why did she have to prove her worth?
She knew her worth. She didn’t have to prove that to anyone.
But she knew it was coming. She wanted the wave to come and hit her. She had been pelted by so many waves already. So many fucking waves that she felt that she was made by water itself.
She had become the ocean, the salt from her eyes was proof was it not?
The salt in her blood was proof.
The blue in her eyes was proof.
She had become a tidal wave in itself, waiting to break,
Waiting to break,
Waiting to-
The voice spoke again and she looked up this time, slowly.
Something spread through her lungs, so she lifted the cigarette to her mouth to extinguish it.
Let him look away first. Let him-
But he didn’t.
So she stared.
And waited.
