Stealing happiness is what you're best at.

"I love you," she said.
He agreed and said, "I love you too."

"I miss you," she said.
He sighed and said, "I miss you more."

"I hate you sometimes," she said.
He nodded and said, "I know."

"I'll never forgive you," she said.
He sat and said nothing.

"I love you," she cried.

And discovered 

that she had been alone 

all along.

What am I supposed to do about the next chapter?

I seem to remember less and less about you each day that passes.
And with each day, you get further and further away, though I'm sure you haven't moved.

I had a dream about you.
I woke up and cried.

I've been listening to the same song on repeat for the past five days because it reminds me of you.
I really wish you would come back so I could give it to you.
I haven't talked about music to many people since you left.
I don't think I've made a CD since you left, either.

I think when you left you took a piece of me with you.
At least, I haven't been myself since you forgot to say goodbye.
I need it back, please.

I'm terrified I'll never be the same without it.
I'm terrified I'm falling apart and there's no way of stopping it, because you aren't here.
I'm terrified I can't keep anything together when you aren't here.
I'm terrified I'm starting to become the old me.

I don't need any promises or anything more than what we had.
I don't even know if I really need that piece of me back.

I just need my best friend again.

Do not go lost into that mute sky.

She takes his hand, this innocent, simple creature and they walk into the dark night where barely any dare travel. It is cool; a light breeze slides under the hair at the back of his neck. It is not unpleasant. Not yet.

"Where are we going?" he wonders. But she just lifts a finger to her lips.
"Silence," is her only response.

He doesn't understand her. She never asked him to before now.

He is incandescent and full of gold. She is vague and full of charcoal. They are oppositions to one another. Yet he finds it in himself to trust her and she, him. That is why she has taken his hand. That is why he does not turn back. His fingers fit easily in the spaces of hers. Comfortable.

Deeper into the night they go. Where the black is ink and the shadows are light. She has told him little of what awaits them, only that she has to show him. He has wondered what is in her dark hours for so long. He can barely hold in his excitement.

But there is apprehension, also. She is so important, so beautiful to him. He worries at the horrors they may face. Horrors of her own mind's creation. She sees his worry and does not try to reassure him. She does smile at him, small and quiet. There is little she can honestly do.

And she does want honesty. Oh, she has never wanted it so in her life. She has been content, but he has stirred her. Mixed up her insides and taken some for himself. She can't bare to let him away for long, knowing he has those parts of her.

She wants him to understand the other parts he does not yet hold before he can take more.

Soon their walking has led to their destination. They have arrived and what he finds there, in this place of her own design, is frightening. More frightening than he can begin to comprehend. But she stays with him, holding his hand. She wants him to understand. She wants him to know.

He tries. It is not easy, but he is earnest.
Eventually, he does.

And when it is over and the nightmares have all been met, they depart. Back to the light, back to his day. He understands her now in ways he never has. They have grown together, grafted branches twisting and gnarled.  Just before they arrive at morning, she turns to him with words burning her tongue.

"Thank you for the stars," she whispers.

"You deserve them," he replies.

She never was the best at following the trends.

Once there was a boy who told a girl her eyes were beautiful.
He described the color of them as if they were such perfection, no one could ignore them.
Believing the boy, the girl always told everyone the color of her eyes as he had told her. She became entrapped with her own irises, always becoming excited when she saw what he saw.
Then one day the boy left and never returned.
Now the girl, when she has the confidence to meet her own gaze, wonders how he ever called her eyes beautiful.
"All I see is plain brown," she thinks. "Two pools of dead mud."
Her best feature has been stolen, and her beauty is gone.

Once there was a boy who gave a girl the music of the world.
He shared with her a kind of magic only tunes can carry, giving her the notes to their spontaneity.  He'd play his guitar and she her violin, and together they'd laugh and mess up notes, but be happy because they were writing things no one else could. They were making their own tunes, making their own magic.
Then one day the boy left and never returned.
Now the girl sits alone, missing the sound of his guitar and his songs.
She forgets how to make notes the way they did, forgets her magic, and her violin rusts away.
Her music has become rotted, and her talent is gone.

Once there was a boy who said he loved a girl.
But one day the boy left and never returned.
Now the girl wonders if he ever really meant it.

Once there was a girl who didn't cry.
She used to sleep, and now she walks through the night. She used to dream, but now her dreams have become nightmares.
She used to believe she loved a boy.
Then one day the boy left and never returned.
Now she has an emptiness that no one seems capable of filling. It's a void she can pretend isn't there, one that she wishes were gone.
But in the quiet, when everyone is gone, she wonders.

"Where'd you go?" she asks.

"Somewhere you can't follow," Silence answers.