Our hearts are buried underground.

act i.

music was one of the only things i knew you appreciated, even if you denied it, because the light in your eyes when you picked up your violin, when you played capriccios you had long memorized, could never be mistaken for something other than love. it is how i often saw you, in the foyer of the ancient house your ancestors owned, stepping to a melody’s rhythm and humming along to its tune.

but there was a day when i arrived and the lounges were empty, dust coating armchairs lined with gold and cobwebs hanging from glass chandeliers. i wandered your old family home, looking for something to occupy my mind with until you came back.

behind the house, there was an overgrown garden underneath the roof’s shade. it spoke of a beauty that had long been forgotten about, left to stew among unpicked weeds and uncut grass, until a stranger arrived out of curiosity. grey stone statues covered in moss stared at me with empty gazes.

it wasn’t long after that you came outside, in your blaze of crimson and black, with curses on your tongue. “it’s messed up how you made me come all the way out here to see you.”

“you never told me your family has a garden,” i replied.

“nothing grows; it’s not a garden.”

“it’s pretty. you should have shown me.”

you laughed at that and reached for the nearest statue, pushing it with all your strength. it crashed to the ground, your shoe finding its head. it shattered miserably, but somehow it was not enough for you, so you broke another one too, then another one, then another, until all the statues were staring at you through the thick weeds and long grass as disembodied heads and cracked eyes.

act ii.

(“what’s wrong?”

you laughed and your voice echoed, a mockery of the symphony that had just played its fanciful melodies. “what isn’t wrong?”

sunlight was leaking through the drawn curtains of the empty concert hall, your only other witness as you spoke like you’re drowning, like it would make the pain stop, and i still did not know how to help you.

“i can’t try to make it better if you don’t tell me what it is,” and i regretted it as soon as i said it, but i couldn’t stop, “so tell me.”

your eyes were alight, shining with the reflections of stage lights still left on, the only source of life i could find. every other part of you was as still and as marbled as the statues you smashed that day in the garden. you got up from your seat to leave.

i grasped your wrist, unsure what else to do, pleading silently for you not to go. i could barely stand to watch the contempt twist in your expression, even though it only lasted for a second. it vanished like the echo of the final note to an orchestra’s suite, fading into the air, but the loss still lingered, just as i could feel every time i looked at you.

i let go, then. it hurt to see nothing familiar in your expressions. to have lost the ability to read you like the sheet music you tried to teach me the violin with. to look at you and find none of the soft edges i had mapped out before.

and it was like coming home to an empty house.)