The night is dark and her limbs are leaden and strained as she walks back. The gravel thuds with every step, small rocks scattering faintly before their noise is swallowed by the wind that gently threads through the canopies with a quiet whistle that promises sleep. Her eyes blink in the light of the room as she makes her way to the door, wincing as she moves her arm too quickly. Moments later, she is granted relief as the hot water pours down like rain and washes away dirt and blood that has stained and crusted on her once beautiful skin that is now marked with scars. Slowly, she reaches up to thread her numb fingers through her hair, careful not to disturb the dull aching that flares up sharply every time her shoulder shifts a bit too much. The sound of the water falling is the only sound besides her breathing as her fingers work through black strands, undoing tangles that are a result of too much pain and struggle to survive. She tries to gently coax the matted blood that ties the strands together, feeling dry flakes embed themselves under her nails and sticky, somewhat melted clots stain her fingers. Once, her nail nicks a spot of sensitive, raw flesh on her scalp, and she jerks away, reminding herself to address the wound later now that she is aware of it. When she steps out, she stares at herself in the mirror and cannot find the will to do anything but stare some more. There is a certain tragedy, she thinks, in her reflection. She used to be beautiful, she remembers. Not so long ago, she was composed and competent, with unmarked skin and eyes that held some sort of life. Now, she is ragged—her skin is stained, scrubbed raw in an attempt to rid her sins from her mind, scratched and bandaged, with wet hair that is clean, but dulled, its shine lost. Her eyes are tired, but more than that, they are empty. Perhaps it is poetic that she is here, wrapped in loose clothes she did not care enough to choose, sitting barefoot on her bed without a blanket because it is too warm, cheek pressed against the window in a futile effort to cool her face down. Perhaps it is poetic that she ended up unrecognizable and empty, with no structure or routine to tell her what she is doing, why she is doing it, and how she will do it. Her days have become chaotic and breathless with no space for reflection or thought, and she thinks maybe someone so egotistical and controlling like herself probably deserves it.
Loneliness is an empty feeling. Usually, she would cry. She is unfortunately prone to her own emotions, after all. But loneliness is a feeling that brings no sobbing fits or devastating emotional breakdowns. Loneliness, she thinks, is the feeling of water sliding down her cheeks unprompted as she stares at a sky that will never give her stability no matter how much she demands. The faint reflection in the glass is bitter. Her eyes are glassy and red, teardrops falling down in a uniform, single track that is almost beautiful in its neatness. It is a small mercy, that at least some part of her is still in order. Beyond the ghost in the window is the shadowed forest, a blur in the darkness. Leaves blend into trunks and grass, and there is no movement. She envies the trees and the woodland creatures. For them, there is no war, no violence, no blood-matted hair or bone-weary exhaustion. They can sleep and recede into a state where there are no worries except basic survival. Their lives are predetermined and they do not have to plan and schedule and map out every minute in a frantic frenzy like a dying woman. Her gaze shifts upwards entirely of its own accord and finds the stars. Inexplicably, her gaze hardens. The stars are mocking and beautiful all the same. They shine and sparkle without a care in the world. They are snowflakes in a cold, crystalline winter made of snowdrops and intricate spindles of ice that do nothing but fall and float as they please. The stars are cold but bright, they are the same stars a young girl might have wished upon, the same stars that watched eons of change and stagnancy and had no responsibility or erratic fits of imperfection. The stars are something one will never touch but can only see. They are a pinnacle of beauty and wonder, and yet they taunt her every time she tries and fails to join them. She is not frustrated with the stars, she supposes. Rather, she is frustrated with the fact that she was meant to be one. She has fought and struggled every day of her life to succeed and keep up. She has made herself intelligent, beautiful, charismatic, competent, productive, everything she can be to climb the ladder constructed. She has done everything, and she is everything. And yet now she sits against a window, uncomfortably warm thanks to her own body heat, in clothes that feel loose and incorrect, salted lines tracing a worn path from eye to jaw, with drying hair that will surely be bloodied and tangled once more, skin that has been smeared with sins and imperfections, and eyes that hold no life. If she had the energy, she would be angry, angry at the fact that she fought for so long, became so much, tore at her soul until it fit in the box she constructed, and yet the stars, which were simply made as they were, sit comfortably in the sky and shine down on a girl who is meant for more than this miserable life.
