She stared; silently waiting, holding her breath quietly, but she knew what was going to happen. She KNEW this was coming, but she wouldn’t allow her self to believe her eyes. She was standing next to one of the supporting poles to the structure of the stadium, hiding within earshot to the one she loved and the one her loved one loved. She overheard every single word, and though she wanted to just turn her ears off and turn away, she couldn’t, she just stood there, she could almost literally feel her heart turning a hundred times, breaking in millions and millions of tiny shards that cut her up inside, causing her to feel as if she was bleeding on the inside, but she watched, it felt as if she was standing there for hours, super glued to the same spot behind the thick cold poles, she was loosing feeling in her toes and hands, wearing a skirt and thin shirt, she had yet to notice that she was freezing. The warmth that he saw in both of their eyes as they smiled and hugged and walked off, the warmth of the thought that the hand he was holding, could’ve, at one point, been her hand.
She watched, as they disappeared with such an ease, his arm around her slender shoulders, the remaining pieces of her heart managed to reach her throat, and she felt the dry feeling of a long suppressed heart explode in her throat. Her breath became heavy as the empty place where she knew her heart was no longer began to grow more pressurized and painful, still pumping blood, but at an amazing speed. She felt the cold rain behind her eyes burn and small droplets escaped their warm, salty enclosure. Her knees gave way as she felt the heavy shards of her heart pulling her down. The rain behind her eyes escaped faster, the pieces of heart in her throat began to feel drier and drier by the second, and her limbs felt so heavy she couldn’t move muscle. The already night sky seemed to turn a dark shade of gray, and her head was the only thing that would move, she tilted her head up and saw them. The slender and the wonderful, standing there, just talking, so close… in a slowly progressing embrace… they got closer… her head wouldn’t let her look away once again, she needed to, or she knew the sharp shards and the heavy bleeding they were causing would only increase, but her eyes wouldn’t move, they wouldn’t save her. Like everyone else she knew, her eyes just wouldn’t save her. Their faces were no more than the width of a finger away from each other, and without a moment’s hesitation, they happily disintegrated the last remaining piece of her heart that was still in its proper place.


She returned, hours later, smiling happily as she was before she had left. Her eyes seemed a little dull, but no one noticed. She saw the two, too wrapped up in each other to notice her flash them a congratulatory smile. Not too far from them was a pair of eyes, so sympathetic, it looked as if they were going to cry for her, those eyes knew about her love for the congratulated male. She smiled at him, and surprisingly, he fell, her eyes had saved her. The dry fragments had not yet left her throat, but the rain had stopped and she had managed the strength to carry the heavy bits of her misplaced heart. She kept the smile, day after day. The couple was quickly getting very comfortable with each other, and it was not long before life seemed almost intolerable.


The day came when the smile went missing. Completely gone, it had disappeared without a single trace, and it took two days for people to notice, and one more for people to find. That broken heart, shattered smile, and defeated stare... they were seen once again, but the empty hole where the fragments had once sat, pulsing hopefully, had completely halted its steady pulse. The internal bleeding that the tattered and splintered bits had caused had finally been freed, and was lying, dry and crusted, all around.


“Bleeding forever inside, but I smile for you.”