Just some writing practice, because I definitely need to write more. :) It's a bit sloppy, but it's much more than I usually post from what I've written—which is nothing. :") Constrictive criticism is always welcome. ^^ I used Canva to throw together the thumb. — — — — — — — — — In the moment, neither of us knew. It was another of the countless nights we’d spend. We’d all be talking, laughing, smiling and teasing. And sometimes you’d lean over and whisper. I had hoped that months later, my ears would still echo with your voice. I had wanted for you to allow me still to sink in the heaviness of your secrets. I did not know that it would be, and I would despise it. “No one else understands,” you told me. “No one cares.” When you told me, I clung to you as if I was the last one on your seabound raft. If I let go for a moment too long, would I watch you tumble slowly into the hungry waves, just far from my grasp? Or worse, just fall, fall, fall for an eternity in the moment I look away, already gone by the time I notice your vacant seat. I could not imagine you falling into the deep blue fathoms as I was off in another world. I could not let myself imagine the overnight hollowness it would carve. I still do not imagine. I need not. I know. “I need help,” you whispered to me, to me, to only me. And I pledged to be there. To wait. To fight off the darkness suffocating you, closing in. “You’re the only one I trust.” I still do not know how many others you told the same. You didn’t know either, did you? Did you lose track of how many people you threw your pain onto, hoping it would relieve yourself of the load? You’d whisper hopelessness into my ear. You spun a tragedy to me, of a hero wronged by the world. A hero so empty and tired. Ready to give up. A hero who needed saving. I’ll be there, I swore. I’ll tread in your waters, above the waves that tried to swallow me. I would have. Sometimes, when times were lighter, all of us would laugh, and I’d tease you. We all smiled, and you’d grin, “Shut up.” I miss it, even now. I miss you telling me to shut up. I know if you said it now, you’d mean it. I loved him. Who was he? He could not have been you. We’d cry and laugh together, holding onto each other. And we hadn’t known. We hadn’t known about all the Songs That Hate You. The songs I would turn to when you disappeared. The songs tearing you to pieces, the songs I would learn to bleed onto a page. /How were we to know?/ The songs that had become my soundtrack, on gray days when the clouds shroud all specks of vibrance and you played over and over and over in my head. You will never know about all the Songs That Hate You. You will never know about the Girl That Does Not. She wants to feel a flood of anger rising in her. She wishes she did. And though you will never know about all the Songs That Hate You, she will never have the bliss of not knowing again.