you are small now (as small as you'd ever wanted to be), feeling your path across the floor with careful fingertip. there is a thin layer of dust, you are left thinking of a thousand worn shoes and the souls that might have existed inside of them. there is very little to remind assure that you are not any other person in the world, aside from the cold damp hurt across the side of your head, perhaps your proximity to the linoleum. the awkward, slow trickling wetness along your wrist and the questions. and how horribly confusing it is to have been so sure it should have ended. that you were so ready for it, the nothing.

and now, to be praying to some god (one you've never felt, believed) that you might live. that by chance someone might wander in just now and find you. save you.

that it would be okay now, and you're sure, if only someone would..

and no one comes.

and you are alone. crawling again, this time inside. you are sure now that there has never been anyone, outside of yourself. sliding your arms around and holding your shoulders, resting your head on weak knees. tired and drifting and knowing and slipping.

slowly, calmly, the only person who ever really tried to know you, to love you, closes her eyes. she is gone.

there has never been such a quiet as this.