Her.

She sits in front of me, a walking contradiction. A cigarette between her lips and a pack in her lap, a lighter in another hand flipping it on and off. She knew that drove me crazy and that I wanted her to stop but she got off on driving me crazy so I let her. This time I let her. I could tell the storm in her head was a little too much for her to bear today. I could see the blizzard in her eyes and tornado right on the tip of her tongue. She was a fiery combustion on most days but a cyclone of hurricane and angst on days like these. And the most damage she did was to herself.

“You shouldn’t smoke this much. I don’t have to tell you how unhealthy it is.” I tell her.

“F**k off. I don’t like you very much.” She says taking a long hard puff of her cigarette, that I’m pretty sure went as far down in her lungs as it possibly could. Poison seeping into its walls. She looked me in the eyes as if challenging me to stop her from this self inflicting harm. I don’t know what would hurt her more; me stopping her or letting her continue to do what she was doing. But one thing I knew for sure, I wanted her against the wall.

“It’s okay you don’t have to.”, I say. She wasn’t ocean’s water, she was the stormy raining sky. She was a downpour of defiance and sass.

“You think you know everything, but you don’t. And stop leaving your body to corrode. You need to stop letting them steal you from you so easily. You give yourself on a fucking plate. You are the kind they devour. The kind they relish while tearing apart piece by piece. The kind they ravage and enjoy. Stop please stop.”

The ash from the burning cigarette was falling off the edge at the end of her fingertips. And i felt like so was she; falling off the edge. Or was it me? I was the one falling for her. There was no saving me from the fall but I wanted to save her. She had enough damage done to her, another fall and I could feel that would break her. Shatter, more precisely. Her head and heart were already pretty disintegrated.

“Don’t tell me what to do and what not to do. Who the fuck do you think you are?” She roars. So headstrong and untamed. “Just let me be. This body is mine, let me do whatever I want with it.”

“What about the soul that houses in it?”

“What about it? Do you want it? Take it. All those that came before you wanted the same. Everybody wants a piece of it. Take it, whatever’s left of it. I don’t need it anymore. I don’t fucking care.” She threw away the cigarette she was smoking and reached for another
from her pack.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

She contemplated for a second, flipping the lighter on and off between her fingers. She looked at me. She was unraveling me with her eyes and I felt it. I was a frightened boy trapped in a man’s body and she saw it. She kept staring at me quietly, and I felt weak. She was looking at me like she was deciphering me, like a code that cracked the moment she laid eyes on me. A part of me was afraid of what she’d find. Or if what she would find be worthy of her. Her gaze was scrutinizing. Maybe I should have just let her smoke, I mulled over my decision. She stopped playing with her lighter and eased back into her chair, her legs sprawled casually in front of her.

“Okay.”, she finally said. And her rain met with my athirst river.

(In response to Discover challenge: Portraits and Daily prompt:Maybe)