Corroded with time.

The sun tried to fall the day they left, crying behind clouds and diving below the horizon so no one would see it's face. I smoked my last cigarette that day, while we sat in our cars and tried to suffocate the pain in our hearts. "Somethings never change," she said as I pulled another cigarette from the pack, but sometimes, everything changes. Everything has changed and they are gone and I am one fading star swimming through our galaxy alone. They have gone and I am not the same.

I drove with tears in my eyes until the roads turned into nameless ribbons of black flung out in front of me, like a puzzle I could not solve. But my body drove automatically to this house I've always known, as I quietly lost my mind. The ocean broke through the sky as we sat in their driveway and thought to ourselves that this would be the last time this house was our home. Those walls that fit us like a fingerprint, covered in the words I wouldn't let anyone else see. In that final week, she poured out her heart on those walls, her drawings and her demons crawling through the corners. I don't think they'll ever understand what that meant for her, what she gave to them.

And after, as the final trucks pulled away, she and I sat in pews and let our memories seep into the wood, so someone else could live them and feel alive like we once did. We sat in silence and tried not to breathe, but we were scraping our backs on the bottom of the ocean, the final step in a fall from grace. Now, when I close my eyes, their faces blur and they are just memories, pictures. In my dreams, their house is burning and I am the one carrying the flames. You know, they said god would save me, but god, I feel so alone.