<div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><u><a class="link link--external" data-proxy-href="/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2qqyREQv9I0&amp;hash=31d193767eac33810d24cc4a178946b4" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qqyREQv9I0" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">Ache</a></u></span></span><br/>​</div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Melancholia dripped. It was inky black rain, cool and unforgiving- it was the mist in the air, heavy and suffocating- it was like morphine in her veins, pumping nausea into her being and numbing her. She ached, with melancholy and with something else, something darker, something with a sharper edge. It upturned her stomach and weakened her knees. How she shook, a quaking willow branch in a harsh winter wind. She could have been dead- part of her wished that she were. <br/>
<br/>
Part of her wished that it was her beneath the soil, withering away. She wouldn’t have to think. She wouldn’t have to fight for her consciousness. She wouldn’t have to feel the vacancy like a pit in her chest, eating away at the ribs, replacing the marrow. <br/>
<br/>
Amidst the fog she could have been a ghost. Pale skin pearlescent, as fragile as a doll’s- hair nothing but an ethereal wisp, hiding beneath a veil of black- and eyes, milky and translucent, humanized only by the tears that welled in them. If she were alive, she wasn’t showing it. The voices of the mourners around her were nothing but static throbbing in her skull, splitting it at the seams. She stood, statuesque, in the face of their words. Who they were, she would never know. Her focus overlooked their features, their faces, and instead drew itself toward the exposed dirt. An unmonumental mound of disrupted earth. She remained long after the processions had ended, undeterred by those urging her to leave it be. <br/>
<br/>
How could they expect her to go home- to <i>his </i>house- to <i>his </i>belongings, to <i>his </i>portraits, to <i>his </i>boots still left on the front porch? <br/>
<br/>
So she stayed, and she ached.<br/>
<br/>
In truth his death was mercy. He strayed further and further into sickness with each passing day, and chose to treat the disease with what caused it. Each complaint of pain was followed by a sip of his favorite whiskey. And though it had frustrated her into mania each night he wallowed in his inebriation, it still didn’t seem <i>fair</i>. <br/>
<br/>
In youth she had been told that a father is always supposed to be there for his girl. But where was he now, when she needed him most? Where was he when she was buckling under her agony, where was he when she was choking on her sobs, where was he when she was so rattled by dissociation that she <i>could have been dead</i>?<br/>
<br/>
Really, he hadn’t been there in months. She should have mourned his death years ago.<br/>
<br/>
But Reno hadn’t ever been good at letting go. <br/>
<br/>
Poor girl was called Reno but she was no Nevada, no glowing lights and sin. She was called Reno but she was Burning Bear instead, rainy seasons and pines and woods that consumed the horizon. She was small-town misery who wanted <i>so badly </i>to be big city neon. She never could be.<br/>
<br/>
The town that she had adored in childhood had swallowed her up and still gnawed on her bones. Every part about it that had enamored her had either rotted or disappeared. Once it had instilled her a warmth, a feeling of welcome. But now, with her family gone or dead and her house haunted by the bitter nostalgia of better times she couldn’t feel more like a stranger. Maybe once she had the chance to slip out, but it was far too late and she was far too caught up in the brambles. She was just another dead end in a town that ran in circles. <br/>
<br/>
She was desperate to find familiarity, something to cling onto. All she found was this pile of dirt <i>this fucking grave </i>this headstone that said nothing but <i>father</i>-<br/>
<br/>
<i>Father, father, father </i>maybe he was one, years ago, before the <i>ache- </i><br/>
<br/>
But he hadn’t been one in years, she should have mourned him, she should have mourned him. She had tried so hard to believe in this <i>father</i> bullshit and had wasted so much time on him. Maybe if she had mourned him at the start she wouldn’t be here now. Maybe she would have gotten out.<br/>
<br/>
Maybe, maybe, maybe… she was composed of <i>maybes</i>… <br/>
<br/>
She stood at the grave’s edge and her mind crept from her. Her head emptied. She was like the house, <i>his </i>house, echoing and void and painted in memories of what was before. Painted in memories of him- <i>father</i>…<br/>
<br/>
It wasn’t too long before she was the only one left in the cemetery. The others gave up in trying to console her. She was a lost cause with too many losses to count. It was pitiful, really- she was unaccompanied by family, unaccompanied by friends, unaccompanied by anyone but the shadow at her back and the ghosts who, in that moment, shared purgatory with her. She blended in with the headstones, still and unmoving, cold to the touch. Perhaps if she stayed long enough, she would become one of them.<br/>
<br/>
It pained her to think that if she were to follow him, right now, crawl into the earth beside him and sleep, no one would come to leave flowers for her. Hers would not be marked, or cried over, or remembered. It would collect dust and moss and return to the trees.  <br/>
<br/>
Maybe- <i>oh she was tired of these maybes</i>- maybe it would be for the best.<br/>
<br/>
Anything to stop this fucking ache.</span>