It was a tradition that was made with the hope of being broken. Every time it rained, she would sit by the window on the bench with the sun kissed blue cover and watch the water roll down. The curtains that framed the windows edge were gauzy and yellow, the color of happiness, and in the beginning, when there was joy, her smile would brighten at their cheerful disposition, but now they disgusted her with the hopeful face they put up to the world. They were just another lie, nothing more. Besides, smiling had lost its magic long ago.

She barely moved, just the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, and an occasional scratch, but inside her mind was racing.

Her favorite days were when the rain was so heavy that the outside world could not be made out. The days when everything blurred together, and she could pretend it was just the rain, and not the liquid in her own eyes that made everything hard to see. The days when her reflection was skewed and distorted in the streaks of water, when she could imagine the appearance she’d always wanted.

She sat by the window and dreamed about what her life should’ve been.

It was impossible to feel warmth on these days, no matter how much heat was blown up from the vents that rattled and kept her awake when everything else was as still as death. It wasn’t the type of cold that made her knuckles flush purple, or the type of cold that made her skin prick up. It was a deeper cold, like someone had poured gallons of ice down her throat, a cold that reached inside and caressed her deepest organs.

It was a cold that could only be described as an ache.

And sometimes, sometimes when she was certain that no one knew she existed, that she could stay by this window and no one would ever care, no one would ever go looking, her heart would start to beat faster, and she would get an urge to run, run despite the rain and the cold that made her bones ache, run as fast and as far as she could, run like everything she feared was chasing her.

Run like there was a possibility she could get away.

But instead, she sat, and watched the windows cry.