I fell for him like one would fall from a cliff, screaming for him, as you do.
I’m on a ledge now, farther down, just barely having caught myself.
I can see him above me, a different name on his lips as he takes the final step, my name mixing with this other girl’s as he looks at me, knowingly.
His picture is in my hands, and a mixture of my own face and someone who is alien to me, in his. The picture in his hold shifts, my face becoming clearer by the second and I step closer to the edge of the small rock, which I’d managed to grab on my way down, chasing after him.
And it’s in that plunge that my body jerks and I’m awake again, standing at the very top again, holding three pictures in my hand, staring down the abyss that everyone jumps from, rocks jutting out from the sides, soft but durable as you take the descent into madness.
I look at the three pictures in my hand, and I sit, waiting on the ledge, setting two down and clutching at that last one.
I look down at this picture and smile, a sad look on my face as I stare at it and it continues to shift before landing on one face, his face, image still shivering now and then to another, but it stayed his.
Not the one I dreamt of at night who was torn as he slipped from the cliff.
Not the one who had held my picture to his chest as he jumped for me landing on ledge after ledge, making his way down.
No…
I turned from the abyss, an image of him staring at the girl he’d jumped for, and my heart freezes again, though I should be used to this sight by now.

Then it shatters, like someone had taken that fragile, broken, life supporting organ and smashed it to pieces like it would save the life of the one whose picture they held.

Everyone’s story is different, mine different than who he dreamed of, different than the other girl whose face twisted with mine in the picture that the one I dreamt of held. If I looked to either side, I could see elders, who climbed back out after their previous picture pulled away to drift under the waves on the far side of the abyss, peers, drifting around, reluctant to take the dive and be tied down, and children, waiting for a picture to fade the black, starry mess from their picture frame and suddenly…

I wished for the starry black stretch of sky to rest in my frame again.

My heart lay on the ground at my feet and I picked it up, piecing it back together messily, shoving it into my chest, the shards jabbing me with every step I took towards the edge again, foolishly trusting the one who wielded the hammer that shattered it to glue it back together, even as a friend, the next time we drifted close in this abyss.