DESPOINA
She dreams of him, even as she shuns the rest of the world.
She wonders if his child has his eyes or is wrapped in shadow the same way. She wonders if they inherit the smoke of him or if they are the opposite. Do they breathe light. Do they love him. Does he love them? She cannot help the sharp ache in her breast when such questions haunt her. She cannot help the way that her very body twists around the pain of it, pressing into the blade until it stings, until it cleaves her in half.
In some world, she would perhaps fold into herself more.
She would heal herself, nurse the wound until she found the horizon again.
But this is not that world. This is not the ending she is given. Instead, she hardens. She calcifies. She feels it pierce her and the poison solidifies in her belly. It turns into anger, and hatred, and a desperate, dark need to tear those down around her. She shifts, sometimes, in her sleep and wakes as the hound, her head thrown back with blood on her mouth and tears in her eyes and a belly fully on nightmares.
She stalks the world and when she tears out the throat of strangers, she imagines it’s her.
She imagines it is the mother of his child.
(There are some days she no longer recognizes herself.)
Today though—today, she is still Despoina. She hides the beast somewhere deep within her and she pretends that it does not exist. She pretends that did not gorge on those she would have once desperately wanted to be her friends. She pretends she is still sweet and pretends that she was never ruined.
And when she sees him, she freezes, her black eyes going flat.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do