"I got troubled thoughts and
and a self-esteem to match."

what a catch, donnie//fob
 

Kira

Kira stood outside the entrance to her school staring at the freshly drained sky. It was dark and gloomy and it gave her a strange feeling of serenity. Perks of being numb, she thought grimly. Everything just felt eerily calming because her body had no other conflicting emotions to bring forth.

School had just ended. Inside her bag, another paper she had barely looked at had been ed carelessly inside. She had only needed to look at her teacher's eyes to know her exam script was tainted with crosses.

Red marks, disappointed eyes and heavy sighs... it seemed like these were the only things the school had to offer her these past few months. Oh how her mother would be so delighted.

Kira strayed her eyes away from the sky and eyed the puddles on the ground. It reflected blurry images of the leaves on the trees and the vast grey sky above. She sighed. She had no choice but to walk to her house then. Kira hoisted her skateboard higher on her sides and took a step out of the shelter of her school, trying not to think about how she used to call her 'house' a 'home' once. Her shoes came in contact with water and the rain from the ground made a small splash sound and quickly vanquished her thoughts.

It wasn't always like these, she thought. Her foot had come in contact with another puddle.

There was a time when her papers were returned scotch free. Splash.

A time where teachers and people didn't look at her with pity in their eyes and breathed sighs of disappointment. Splash.

A time when she felt curious. Of learning, of living. Of everything. Splash.

But not these days. Or these past months. Or for the past years.

Kira stopped.

She supposed it all started when her father died.

Her father- oh, her sweet father. He was the artistic one in the family. He used to paint.

He painted everything he saw and felt – the sky, the grass, how the breeze felt on a summer afternoon… he would never stop until he could paint everything his eyes can ever see and his heart could ever feel.

Her father taught her how to view the world in his perception. He taught her that brushes were an extended arm and canvases were spaces of possibility and escape. He taught her to view the world in colours and how an object could never just have one – just different shades.

‘Just like people’, Kira remembered him saying. He was so open-minded and so receptive to everything and everybody around him.

Kira admired him like the sun.

But then he passed away one afternoon three years ago and Kira felt all the emotions she was capable of feeling left her heart one by one as the months and years came.

She supposed she was never the same since then.

Splat.

A raindrop splattered on her cheek, Kira wiped it off and stared at her water-stained fingertip. Rain was starting to fall again and the splat of raindrops against the pavement surrounded her feet, staining water marks onto her jeans. She could feel the faint drop of cold water onto her face and skin, like a caress, a small poke a friend would do to someone to get them to smile or wake up from their dreamlike trance.

Only Kira wasn’t smiling. She stared at the rain drop on her finger as other raindrops fell on her. A sound of a cheerful bell ringing from a cyclist passing by came followed by the joyous squeal of children behind her as they compete to run for shelter.

Kira felt suffocated.

A big lump in was starting to form and a part of her wished the rain around her feet would just rise up and swallow her so that she could give a logical explanation for what she’s feeling. She hated feeling helpless. A prisoner to her emotions.

Her fingers started to shake. Kira struggled to breathe. Her eyes were wide-opened and strained. She could feel tears starting to pool around her eyes before shutting them as tight as possible.

She would not cry.

The lump in became unbearable and a sob came out from her body as a protest. It needed to breathe fast.

Then Kira did the first thing her mind had always wanted to do these past years.

She ran.