& that's what best friends are for...

seeing you everyday is like jabbing 1,012 peace pins into my spine. i am sent to hell in a combustion of love and pain and sadness, and the urge to wipe that strained smile off of your face. when i hear your broken laugh, i long to reach out and hold you and bandage up your crumbling soul, but i know that if i do, you'll just paralyze me with your wavering gaze and in a questioning voice ask, "what the *bunny*, ariel?"

so i just stand there, immobilized by the sheer power of your boundaries, the force fields and walls that constantly surround you, through which no one can break, but i can see. and my spirit drops and i fall fall fall down into the black hole named after you.

Caroline, i love you to death. loved, i should say, because caring about you and your health and the purple halo that you bask in has long since killed me. my emotions crawled up and ate me alive. i hear they've escaped and are now wreaking havoc upon the city. the same city where stars cry and we both live; where i fell in love and you fell off your horse and realized for the first time that the world isn't rainbows and texting and chocolate, that there are tornadoes and suicides and people with guns. in this city, there are people like you, with bazooka irises and waning smiles who once were perfect. then there are those like me who continuously grin, who want so desperately to help, but are forced to tie up and gag themselves as they watch in horrified bemusement as lives burn around them. i am the person who disects myself daily just to figure out what part of me isn't working correctly, while you watch, virgin martini in hand, like the semi-virgin you know you are.

Caroline, i'm so sorry.
i'm sorry i'm corrupted and corrupting, interrupting and useless for anything besides spewing facts no one will ever care to remember.
i'm sorry i'm so willing to throw myself off a cliff after every butterfly i see and that i long to know what color shadows are and that i wish i knew what a full heart looked like and how my 4.0 gpa can't hide the fact that i'm a dumbass with too much power.

i'm sorry that he hurt you and that i wasn't there to stop him, even though i didn't know you then. i'm sorry that you don't know who "he" is and that the one person who could help you figure it out died doing something you love.

i'm sorry you'll make out with any boy who has pretty eyes. i wish i could rip my soul out by its feet and shove it in front of your face, so you could see in the most honest mirror imaginable just how beautiful your own eyes are.

i'm sorry i couldn't save you.

i'm sorry i blew myself up in my attempt to disassemble the bomb that is your life.

i'm sorry you forgot all about me and moved on to older, more popular, more beautiful friends, leaving me behind to be the spasm in someone elses cheek.
but that's fine.
you deserve one another.

i'm sorry all i can hear is tears and armageddon and the sound of my heart rate slowing down to nothing.

but most of all, Caroline, i'm sorry i wasted my time on someone who didn't want it.

we.were.best.friends.

Caroline, have a nice *bunny* life.