the graveyard of broken hearts

If I stop, if I listen, I can hear every heartbeat in the world, synced with mine.

Thump. Thump.

Here you’ve returned, to the place I never thought you would. I can see the crinkle in your eyes, the inquisition as you try to draw out the right question for the wrong answer. Watch as you open your mouth, as the words fix themselves into sentences.

“How are you alive?”

Thump. Thump.

I can hear the words themselves, but I can’t make sense of them. I can hear your heart beating faster as I don’t respond, watch as you demand retribution. Answers. I want to speak, but I won’t. Because you know what I’ll say, but you refuse to accept it.

Thump. Thump.

The earth has its own heartbeat, 26 seconds per throb, and I can feel that slow, lulling thrum beating slowly, drawing out its immortal time. I can feel your heart, much faster, because you don’t have as much time. I hear you ask the question, finally. I hear the crack in your voice, see the set, determined line of your mouth.

“Is she dead?”

Thump. Thump.

This world is frigid, ground packed with grime and ice that crunches to the touch, the only sound in this icy graveyard. But this is the first time I’ve heard that crunch, because I leave no footsteps. There is nothing for miles here, nothing here except your own heartbeat. I am neither warm nor cold, at an imperfect equilibrium that can only be achieved by a final act. Death. Yet I can see you shiver, eyes glassy from the nipping frost. 

Thump. Thump.

It is a vast wasteland here, and where I’ll live forever. But you, you can go.

“What did you do?”

Behind me lies an impression of my past, imprinted on these icy, empty graves. I am like Sisyphus, condemned to live with my actions for the rest of eternity. I will never leave this place, because I can’t. 

I’ve committed theft, is the only thing I say.

Thump. Thump.

“What did you steal?”

I inhale as I remember, closing my eyes as you wait patiently. 

A mercurial angel full of life, a walking contradiction. Star-crossed calamities destined to fail, and a one-sided determination to prove them wrong. I’ve effaced these things from my memory but there are some things I’ll never forget. A laugh, a rose, a smile, a movie. I remember how the movie ends. Never with fate on our side.

Thump. Thump.

Things were eerily serene when I went home that night, I begin.

The wasteland where I stand before now wasn’t always a ghost town, so to speak. It was a city that breathed, a human city full of the living and excitement. I can feel the buzz now, recall the cinema down 9th street, how they locked the doors an hour after opening because it would be so packed. The tentative family restaurant that was empty on weekdays but fully reserved on weekends. And my house…Vida’s house…just one block away.

That night…October thirteenth, her birthday. Just a day before, I called my parents and said I was proposing. Like all other phone calls, I hung up first. But today, today would be perfect. I’d bought all the tickets in the cinema. The restaurant would perform just for her. I had her favorite hyacinths, and I had the ring, a perfect gem that I knew she would adore.

That night, I came home from work early. Brimming with excitement, with nerves, with fear. I still recall every detail: sliding the key into the lock, taking off my shoes, hanging up my coat. Analyzing the room before me. 

The clock from a thrift store was the only sound. A plastic sterile clock, nailed to the grey wall. Tick. Tick. 

It was silent.

I’d never lived with silence before.

“Vida?”

I didn’t understand at first.

“…where is she?”

It was then when I saw the letter on the living room table addressed to me. I tore it open with shaky hands, expecting the worst, but not this.

You should have listened to our warnings…

I stopped breathing, and it was then when I only heard my heartbeat. Beating in my ears. 

Thump. Thump.

My vision became shaky, blurring as I read uneasily.

We have only your concerns in mind when we tell you this…Vida is too much trouble.

How you are aware of her past and still want to live with her is beyond us.

After everything, it was evident an intervention was necessary.

Please keep in mind that everything we do is for your sake…
I knew.

Don’t be rash.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Love, 

Them.

Everything else I will tell you is a blur.

I burst out of the house, looking, searching for a key to a chained door with no lock. I was filled with hate, fear, with emotion I would never feel again. I couldn’t understand. I heard the clock counting down…tick. My own heartbeat, speeding up at an incredible rate. Thump. Thump. Thump.

I was untethered as I scrambled, as I found her, destiny’s ties cut; unraveled as I, hands shaking uncontrollably, straightened my shirt for the last time. That night, everything was blissfully obscured. I stumbled around in a daze, yet I was more in control than I had ever been. I know I found them, whoever did this, and that was my first theft. My first stolen heartbeats, because they took hers. And my second theft, after lying down her vibrant violet hyacinths, colored with life next to her dull, ashy skin, was my last wish. I stole my heartbeat, just as I caused the death of hers.

Thump…

You look at me in shock now, in disbelief. Because I am standing now in front of you, telling you this story, in this piercing graveyard of ghosts.

But you can’t hear the thrum of my heart, because I have become the thief of heartbeats. I have stolen hers, theirs, the earth’s, and yours. I hear your footsteps as you back away in fear, crunches in the snow, the first sound, but I can’t hear your heartbeat anymore.

And now, I am free.