The Raven.

In another life, Eloise thinks maybe she was a bird. A pretty bird with black silken feathers and a razor sharp beak that never missed her prey. She imagined she soared through the night sky, utterly weightless with the pleasant stretch of her wings and the distant world below her. In that other life she was free, free of all the pointless things being a human had thrust upon her. Free of guilt, of pain, of waking up and wondering if today was the day her existence would finally end. As a bird the only thing that’d kill her were the predators designed to, not her own thoughts and the idea that things would be better if she wasn’t there.

If in another life she was a bird, here, now, she was just the cage that wanted so badly to covet what it never could.

The repetitive tap of a pencil against a desk broke her from her revere, her eyes flicking up to watch it meet the surface again and again with a dull thump, she was entranced by the sound.

“Eloise?” A voice asked, it belonged to the one who was tapping the pencil, the tone concerned- if she thought about it a bit harder, it sounded annoyed.

Eloise lifted her gaze, making eye contact with Lara with a questioning hum. She watched her friend's eyes pass over her face with excruciating focus, flitting to the pout Eloise always wore to the hand she lazily leaned her face on.

Lara’s brows, which had been furrowed, smoothed over like she found what she had been looking for. Which was nothing, Eloise was always careful to make sure of that.

“Are you done studying?” She said, “You’ve barely touched your notebook for the last half hour.”

Eloise laughed, looking down at her empty notebook and then back up to Lara who was also laughing. She didn’t think she had ever really started, the first hour of their study session Eloise doodled in her notebook, flipped absentmindedly through her textbook before succumbing to the safety of her thoughts and the dreams that lived within them. She was grateful that if Lara had noticed it, she had just chosen to ignore it.

“Yeah I think if I try to focus anymore I’ll give myself a headache.”

Lara smiled, closing her own notebook before grabbing her phone. She tapped on it for a few moments, Eloise watching her smile grow with every passing second. She couldn't ignore the sudden drop in her stomach when she noticed her own phone- which was always left on vibrate- lay still in the pocket of her zip up as Lara texted away.

It didn’t have to mean anything.

It didn’t have to be more than it was.

It didn’t have to fill her lungs with a thick black goop that made it harder to breathe.

It was fine.

It was fine.

Eloise hadn’t realized she was staring off into space until her vision unblurred, focusing back on Lara as the girl set her phone down. The sound it made against the table was almost deafening, the little charms she had dangling off of it clattering like a sharp scream in her ears.

“Let's go, we have to pick up Viv and Ann for the beach tonight.” Lara packed her stuff up quickly, Eloise unable to do anything but the same as, one, simple little thought repeated itself over and over in her head. She had no idea they were even going to the beach in the first place.

It was fine.

-

Eloise didn’t know the exact moment she had decided she couldn’t trust her own feelings, or thoughts. She thinks it happened slowly, a moment of stress here, an overthinking spiral there, all building up to make her someone she couldn’t recognize anymore. It was hard to know what was real or not when more often than not she was sometimes right about things and other times she was so off base it made her feel crazy. Even the times she was wrong managed to prove her right when the aftermath always led to the few thoughts she knew she could trust.

She was useless.

A burden.

All she did was cause problems.

People always told her it was in her head, that if she opened her eyes and got out of the clouds and really looked at the world around her, she would see. See what? She wanted to say. I see things perfectly fine, no point in the rose colored glasses when the garden is already dead.

Eloise walked a few paces behind her friends, the three of them walking side by side down the creaky wooden boards of the pier. They had tried to include her, tried to talk to her and make her laugh. It worked sometimes, and Eloise felt her lungs breathe a little lighter, but they stopped after a while, smiling at her with sad eyes when they had had enough.

She wondered when they’d finally be done. What they would do when dragging her along got to be too much. Would they let go? Would they fade away into the fog of her mind, living on as fond memories she would cry herself to sleep to?

I’m losing you guys, aren't I? She’d say, when her time was up.

I’m losing myself.

She’d smile and act like it was okay, tell them it was.

It's okay. It really is. I understand.

Her friends all laughed ahead of her, a joke Eloise hadn’t heard filling the air with the sound of their joy.

She hated how badly she wanted to laugh, too.

How she felt like a beautiful black bird trapped in a cage.

Just hold me gently before you leave;

Let me feel like I deserve to be loved just a little longer.