two; prompts: memory, empty spaces

Memories, memories. So many of them. How quickly they come, how soon they go. Uninvited, unwarranted, in no measurable order or pattern. Places and faces. Feelings and sensations. Sounds and situations. A gentle warmth, a cruel ache. You remember this, you remember that. You try to purge yourself of hurt yet leave vicious claw marks in joy. There is never any reprieve. The memories come and go. Ceaseless, like waves meeting the shore, unrelenting as they hit and beyond control as they recede. You hold on, you let go. You clutch at the memories you want to keep only to have them stolen, willing or otherwise. They trickle away, soft and fine, like grains of dry sand through cupped hands.

What you once had is now gone. 
What was once yours will never be within your grasp again. 

Forgetting was a type of hollowness. It left a specific kind of feeling, something balanced precariously between regret and frustration. It was inevitable, of course which was why it was easier to chalk up as a result of the passage of time. The mind grew dull with age and things that couldn’t be used would be cast away. It was unfair to assume the mind could house every little thing it encountered. Of course the old things, the unused things, the clutter and surplus, would be thrown away. Tossed to the side, abandoned and lost. Things like that could only be accepted.  

Remembering wasn’t like that, though. Remembering was a sore that festered and flared up at the slightest of touches. Not all things are worth keeping. Certain things are simply better off lost. But there is no reasoning with a heart. You try to forget, but you keep remembering. 

You keep remembering, you keep remembering.

How little mercy a heart has. You try so hard to forget the unhappiness only to have the feelings savage you from within. So, you try then, instead, to at least make the memories bearable. To let them mature into something less bitter, to cleave them into more manageable segments, to shape them into something slightly more palatable and easily swallowed. You tell yourself what happened was fine, that what has come to pass can no longer touch you. You swallow lies like medicine. All of these vicious little things, endured for the sake of cauterizing old wounds. 

But even then, your heart has too little pity to allow even the briefest relief. The sadness follows like a half-formed shadow. The fear is a weight that can never be removed. The guilt is a viscous poison that courses through your veins. The anger and resentment smolder on, always on the precipice of erupting into a raging inferno that would consume all in its path, self included. 

It’s strange, how cruel the heart can be. 

Jongin had once paid no thought to memory. He had believed there to be a beginning and an end and little else to measure the passage of time. Memories were obscure, intangible things and he had believed himself untouchable. He was ignorant to their power — perhaps it was because so many of his memories had been sweet. Who needed to be strong against sweetness? With Kyungsoo by his side, Jongin had wanted for nothing. 

Of course, the passage of time had changed all that and he could do nothing but feel foolish for his childish ignorance. All the signs and clues – he had simply been too blinded and too enamoured to catch on. That had always been the problem: he had always been too willing to make excuses for Kyungsoo. Of course the sweetness had been too weak to withstand the bitterness that was to come.

Sometimes Jongin would find himself standing the the doorway of Kyungsoo’s bedroom, staring in. He dared not enter – to do so would be a betrayal. Still, he would stand there, despite the intangible boundary he refused to cross, breathing in the scent of dust and ache. The furniture inside was covered with white sheets and a plastic sheeting had been spread across the floor. It was unlived in and cold, but the longer he stood in the doorway, the clearer his minds version of Kyungsoo would appear. 

“Why did you do such terrible things?” Jongin would ask into the empty space.

The Kyungsoo of his mind stood just beyond his reach, the planes of his face gentle and warm. His heart shaped lips would be upturned at the corners in an all too familiar way – yet he never offered any answer.

Of course he didn’t – he couldn't. The Kyungsoo that Jongin had loved so dearly wasn’t real. The Kyungsoo that Jongin housed in his mind was a version constructed of lies. The Kyungsoo of his mind didn’t hold the truths that could set him free, because the Kyungsoo of his mind was only a fragment – a perfectly acted part – of a person that had worn a persona like a second skin. That was the frightening thing about knowing someone: the only part of them that you could keep alive was the version that they gave you. 

It was strange, how cruel the heart could be. Stranger yet, how you could think you knew someone in and out, only to realise you didn’t actually know them at all. 

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A/N
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