Work Text:
I know you're tired of hearing romantic stories.
Romantic stories. Romance. How two people fall in love and live together happily ever after.
This isn't a romantic story.
(No, it's not. Is it?)
Romantic stories don't begin with how the water cuts off while the shampoo still clogs your hair. No, no. It doesn't begin with a pounding headache (it's a bitch) on a Wednesday morning after long hours of meeting. No, no.
You rinse the dishes from last night and you study the mugshot of the man in the newspaper. You imagine a day when the name in that paragraph might finally become yours. But you know all of it is simply a restless thought, and you have better things to be worried about. Better things, better things like—
Like there's a sickness in your heart, stemming from your head, coursing through your veins. Each day is another morning spent searching for a cure for the wickedness in your heart and the pounding at the back of your head. You wonder if a true love's kiss could fix this, but you know it wouldn't. This isn't a love story, and the only remedy that awaits you is in the form of temazepam and ibuprofen. This isn't a love story, and no one can find out how much you crave/need it. There are only three possible outcomes here: the good end, the bad end, the true end, and in every single ending, it will never unfold the way you envisioned it.
Your mother warned you about the dangers of strangers, but you (always) secretly confide in your brothers about the boy you met and you share with your sisters how it didn't work out between you two. From then on, you start contemplating your life from a different perspective. This isn't a love story, and you think, "Okay, fine, there are worse things than this." This isn't a love story, and yet, every time, you'll close your eyes and let the images, of drawings, of flowers drawn with pink chalk on the sidewalks guide you back to the same graveyard (over and over again). You play with fire, and you're always the fall. You sink like a cannonball and think that life is so much more than merely pulling yourself out of the gutter, but what the fuck are you doing there in the first place?
When you say you're crying, what you truly mean is that you want to, but you can't. If you were someone else, you believe you might find your name permanently etched in that paragraph for good. Most of the things you do are in the name of love, but deep down, you know it's impossible to imagine a color you've never seen. You're making a fool of yourself by assuming there are worse things than this. Because you know,
There isn't.
ㅤㅤYou hit rock bottom.
I know you're tired of hearing romantic stories.
Romantic stories. Romance. How two people fall in love and live together happily ever after.
At the beginning of this story, someone starts alone, and they (will always) end up alone.
So this isn't a romantic story.
No, it's not.
Is it?