A Broken Love

She sat alone in the corner of the room, her knees pulled up to her chest, her face buried in her hands. She lost track of the amount of time she had remained there. She only knew the longer she sat there, the more the cold crept up into her bones.

There was a grandfather clock on the other side of the room, but she couldn’t see it. She only knew of its presence by the monotonous tick marking every passing second of her misery. She raised her head only slightly to check for any sign of daylight streaming in through the small dingy window across the room from her, but there was no light to be found. The darkness still shrouded everything. Even she couldn’t shield her heart from the darkness. It began to swallow her in the same manner the cold had: slowly but surely wrapping its tendrils around her, smothering her.

Her tears fell continuously with no sound. There were no sobs to accompany her tears, only silence. It was pure sadness that fell steadily from her eyes. There was no anger, no fear. Simply sadness. The sadness of loss. Heartbreak in its purest form. The more she cried, the emptier she felt. Her eyes stung from the, what seemed like, hours she had remained in this state. Her body was aching to move, but she stayed utterly still, unmoving other than to breathe. “Maybe if I sit here long enough, I’ll become a statue.” she thought to herself. She felt as though she were already turning to stone. An icy feeling had set up in her heart and was starting to spread.

The heat she had felt with him now replaced by the cold harshness of these four walls. All of her love falling to the floor, wasted. She had none left to give. She now harbored only the shattered pieces of her broken heart. Eventually, she ran out of tears, all of her bent emotions now gone. She was now completely empty. With nothing, no one, to live for, she felt worthless, just a hollow shell of the enamored woman she was just this morning. Although no one could see it, a vacant look set up in her eyes, her face slightly sunken. She was now resigned to the fact that he wasn’t coming back.

For the first time that night, she moved from her small position. She laid flat on the floor, staring blankly up at the ceiling, but all that appeared to her was the darkness in between. She began to count the seconds in her mind, keeping in time with the tick of the grandfather clock. Slowly, the number escalated. The more she counted, the more exhausted she felt herself becoming. Her eyes began to flutter closed. This was out of her control. She couldn’t stop herself from accepting the warm embrace of slumber. Finally, her eyes closed and she drifted off, but the usual warmth wasn’t there. She only felt ice begin to envelope her from the inside out. She knew as it surrounded her that this was the end. The ice fully enclosed her as she fell into a deep sleep, never to wake again.