Statue

Statue

Scrub:

Giving up on you was easier than I had expected, and for a few brief moments, so sweet. I cut myself free of the strings I had bound myself with to you, and I cleared out the thoughts of you that kept corners in my mind. I thought I had stopped loving you, I thought I'd figured it all out. I forgot that words can hurt, that words can cut through the barriers you put up in your mind to keep yourself safe, that words can make you remember, that words can make you feel.

For all that I'd thought myself free of you, I had not managed to cut one miniscule, gold string; Its name was hope. Hope kept me dangling in perpetual waiting, waiting for that moment when you would tell me you loved me, and cared about me, and wanted me to be yours forever and ever.

The string, small as it was, tightened around my heart, slowly but surely; it strangled the muscles, put pressure on the veins, and slowly, imperceptibly at first, the cells began to die. They starved not from a lack of oxygen or blood, but from the hope that was wrapped too tightly. As my beating heart died, a curious thing happened: the cells did not simply wither. Instead, they turned to stone, one by one, until the once hot beating organ in my chest was cold, lifeless, and still. As my chest carried its hard burden, slowly the coldness spread outwards, until it reached the tips of my toes, and the ends of my hair, until the hope that had kept me unable to move on turned me to veritable stone, a statue.