Luke Ashley – Chapter 1
He sat on his bed alone with his back against the wall listening to
Al Green, comforted by nothing but the shadow across him that the dimmed lights failed to penetrate.
As if reading his mind Al Green began to sing “How can you mend a broken heart?” His head dropped, helping the tears escape his eyes; He’d given up wiping them now. Nobody told him about this kind of pain, where everything else in the world no longer mattered. He no longer cared about anything. Even breathing was too much of an effort.
In his hand he held a picture of her. For an instant he smiled to himself. She always hated the picture as it caught her off guard, but he loved it. It captured her for who she really was. The picture was of both of them, cuddled on a sofa at some bar or club, on a night that he couldn’t remember. He was obviously drunk as he had his tie tied around his head like Rambo.
Another tear added to the stream making its way down his neck and onto his chest. He thought if only he could tell himself in the photo how important she was to him, then he would never have let her go from his embrace.
He tenderly rubbed his thumb over her face in the photo. He never understood why she hated having her photo taken. To him she was perfection, her brown eyes so soft, so caring.
She had a smile that regardless of how you felt would make you smile too. Thinking about it he realised that he hadn’t seen it in such a long time. How did things end up like this? What did he do wrong? What could he have done to make things better? He honestly did not know.
One minute everything was fine, he would wake up in the middle of the night and have her head buried in his chest, sleeping with not a care in the world. The next he was practically having a relationship with a mobile phone. She was always busy, something always came up. He missed her so much.
If only he had an explanation for why they were not together. Would he feel better had he cheated on her? At least he would know why she rejected him, and not spend sleepless nights contemplating if it was something he did, how he looked, or was it his personality?
Another warm tear trickled down his cheek and landed on the photo. He carefully wiped it away with his thumb, brought the photo up to his mouth and gently kissed it.
He tenderly put the photo under his pillow where it would be safe, and began to write down his feelings in poetry, trapping his emotions line by line.