Not Me

You get a text from your girlfriend. One of many. Usually, the little tone of her saying hey listen lightens your heart and makes you smile. But the taste of her texts is anything but bright. Stress had collided with you both since this afternoon's parting, and the texts are fraught with anguish.
Still, your heart can't help but flutter as you pick up your phone from beside you on the bed and read the latest text.
Your heart falls deep into your chest. She's crying. Your precious girl is upset and you're nowhere nearby to make her smile. This injustice frantically spurns you to action. Then you're off, a knight in shining clanking armor, on a quest to save the princess.



She cries a lot. You can't really stop her sadness, but you try best you can to make her smile, at least. Her words go so fast and her voice breaks so often, you can almost taste the desperate truth in her uttered confessions. She wants to share, wants to let you deep inside her heart so that she can be understood. All she wants is to be understood.
A car ride ends with kisses and laughter, though through her smile you can still see the tears. The two of you enter the house together, she pausing at the crossroads and staring at the foreign activity of a household unwelcome to her. A fear of distaste in her eyes, lingering fragments from the meltdown en route to this point, freezes her in place as she tries to smile and say hello. Her voice shakes. You command her to the bedroom (safe haven), and she follows at your touch.
Her body, her heart, is shaky. Her breaths are uneven. Nothing about her seems stable, but you are near. She cries some more, and you wipe her tears away and kiss her again. She loves it when you wipe her tears away and kiss her again.

You go to leave, on a quick errand for her, and her fingers desperately pull you closer, her eyes still wet with past tears as her voice breaks beneath the frantic plea of please don't go. You stay.