Lost Girl

I didn’t know where I was going, but the shadows were lingering and breathing down my spine like a couple of lost ghosts, trailing behind my feet and so I walked. I walked and my eyes were wandering and my eyelids were slipping and then I stumbled upon a quiet bus stop.

That was when I met you.

You, with your eyes trained on your thumbs, twiddling them behind the broken, dirty fabric of your sleeves. The back of your head was pressed against the metal of the bench and the length of your body was covered with a thin print of newspaper that was issued just yesterday. The moon shone through the glass. You were pale – shivering, even. White wisps of air escaped your lips, and through its cracks, I could see how broken, yet how tender they were, as if they were waiting to be loved again.

When I made another step towards you, your fingers that curled against the flimsy newspaper tightened and suddenly, you threw it off of your body and staggered towards the corner, shaking and scared. Your eyes were round and filled with fear, until they met mine. I blinked, and perhaps you thought of me silly because I kept on blinking and blinking. I couldn’t help it, because you looked so devastatingly beautiful and dashing at that moment. Your hair was disheveled and your clothes were dirty and your lips were trembling and you, you looked like a victim of vice.

And how horrible was it? How horrible was it that you, a boy who looked just shy of seventeen, could be faced with such eternal damnation? I saw it, and I saw it very well. I saw how easily the print of newspaper slipped out of you fingers, then resting on top of your old sneakers. I saw how you shifted away from me, pressing as hard as you could against the glass wall. I saw how you were about to leave, about to run away, and how you did. And for the smallest, slightest moment, I could smell the nightmares in you. Haunting you, killing you slowly, and it made my lips crack open.

“W-Wait,” I breathed out clumsily, mind dizzy and heart heavy.

But you were gone into the night. Afterward, I never saw you again.

I don’t know why I keep going back, but I do. If it’s my desire for adventure, or purely my curiosity, I don’t know. I just don’t. All I know is that I owe it to you. To wait for you, right here, with the same print of newspaper you dropped that one day because I didn’t have the heart to leave it there on the ground, abandoned. It’s silly, but I feel like this piece of newspaper was like a castle. One I could explore though, travel in, and shine a flashlight on and trace the grey walls of it with my fingers, lingering softly on the each and every crevice.

During the fifth day, I look upon the last page of the newspaper. In a crew of people, I see you, and my breath hitches. My fingers press against the grainy paper and my eyes desperately search for clues. Anything. But then everything around you is torn, scratched and ruined from anger. I run into the night, searching low and high for anymore prints. But there are no more. None. No traces of you ever existing, except for my memory of you and this print of newspaper.

I wonder, sometimes, where you are. If you’re doing well, and if you’re sleeping in a bed with a warm, thick blanket over your frail body. I wonder and I wonder and then I am wandering into the streets again, lost in my own mind until suddenly, I realize that perhaps you’re not the lost boy, and that perhaps, I’m the lost girl. I realize that I am walking towards nowhere; I am only searching for someone, anyone, to share my empty world with.

Because today, I am walking again and the shadows consume me again and a new, lone ghost whispers down my spine and when I turn around, it’s you.