paralyze my mind. / apollo

I wasn't used to being by myself.

Each step I've taken since I was a toddler, there's been someone standing on my side to hold my hand along the way. Someone to vent to when there's so much rattling inside my head that a pit starts to form in my stomach and my breaths become rapid and shallow.

He used to be that for me.

We met on the seesaw at recess when his friend ditched him to go play dodge ball with some other kids, and he begged me to get on the other end. There was a lot going on at home then, Ma and Dad were arguing the night before about him being out late at the bar again, so a part of me needed a friend. I can still remember the way my face lit up like stars on a night sky and how my heart fluttered within the cage in my chest when he first spoke to me. He was my silver lining. Hook, line, and sinker. He had me wound around his finger the second those words fell from his lips.

Over the years, we got closer and closer and he became a part of me. A second heart attached to my own, living and beating inside my chest. Like I couldn't breathe without him.

And maybe that was true.

I craved his presence each minute, and even if we didn't speak, just his body next to mine was enough for me. He was a drug to me, I got drunk off his words and euphoric from the taste of his lips. I remember that I used to lay my head on his chest, his arm wrapped around my side and the other in my hands. My fingertips traced the lines on his palm, delicately brushing across the callouses buried in the skin. Those little things were what I missed the most. Like how he'd mess with my hair when I laid my head in his lap or the way his eyes would crinkle every time he grinned. That stupid, lopsided, shit-eating grin that always made my knees weak.

Now I can't stop fucking thinking about him. Like fuck I can't even let myself think of his name because it'd be easier to imagine that he was just a ghost, a shadow in my mind. But it's like his memory taunts me, poking at my glass skin and hoping that I'd shatter. And sometimes, a part of me wants to let it.

Because that tiny piece of him, even just a fractured memory, would get me high.

I was an addict.

Not of liquor or drugs or any of the other bad shit you could possibly get hooked on. I was addicted to his love.

And that was probably the most dangerous of them all.

I would let him break me over and over and over again until there is barely any of my soul left if I could feel his body on mine again. In my heart I know it's wrong but I still want him anyways.

Like a moth to a flame.

He was my second heart and without him, I don't think I'll be able to be loved again. The worst part is that I don't want love unless it's from him. I don't want a kiss unless it's his lips, and I don't want to touch another's body unless it's his.

I want to feel him again but I know those days are long behind me. I wasn't used to being alone. How was I supposed to live without him?