The Perish Of Guilt

Curling my fingers around the sleek, and matte fountain pen I kept pressing it onto the blank canvas in front of me. I kept pressing the pen onto the blank canvas, holding it tight in place until my knuckles turned into a shade of lucid white. I kept pressing the pen hard until there was an evident perforation forming in that blank canvas. I kept pressing the pen, twisting it hard until my fingers went numb and cold. I kept pressing the pen until every bit of the guilt that raged through me passed on that pen and out of my aching soul through the canvas. I kept pressing the pen until that large newly formed hole on the canvas stared back at me with nothing but pity.

I stumbled backward, faltering in my steps as my body shook and trembled by the heaviness of the guilt that still dominated every fiber of my being. My back hit the bare wall behind me as my bones quivered with the coldness that still soaked up my insides. I glided down the wall, slouching onto the white marble floor as my heart still exploded into shards that I never knew existed before. Wrapping my arms around my knees, I rested my head on them as I felt the recognizable guiltiness flowing immensely through every bit of me.

If I hadn't walked away from you, without casting a single look at that disheveled and broken state of yours then all I would've done was to rush back to you and entwine our hands only to drag us together towards that abyss of toxicity and illusions that we labeled with love. If I hadn't given you that ache in your heart, then you wouldn't have realized that the love you said to have for me wasn't your greatest possession, but only a mirage to make you ignorant to all the imperfections of us and causing you to see me as that missing piece to your puzzle that I never was in the first place.

I stared at the distorted nib of the fountain pen between my fingers, then back at that prominent hole that I had created on the blank canvas in front of me. And that was when, I saw the void breathing right at the center of my aching soul maliciously caused by that very guilt that kept blaring through every inch of my existence - the guilt of letting my mind to vanquish the toxic love that resided in me for you. I tossed the pen away from me, my gaze trailing behind it as it fell somewhere in a corner with a soft thud while I saw the familiar numbness crawling back into me, rending every sewn wound of my soul open as the guilt kept gnawing at my insides - the guilt of not regretting every lie and delusion that we ever fed to one another in the chase to build the perfect us. I saw my soul fragmenting yet again piece by piece into shreds of everything that we thought we could be while holding on to each other as the guilt kept flaring within my soul - the guilt of mourning for the end of us when there was no unity amid us at the very beginning.

But my love, we both knew the way we were already lost in the maze of the webs of lies and lies that swallowed us wholly. We both knew, that holding on to a love like this would have only one consequence - and that was the annihilation of me and you. We both knew we would only keep hurting one another while making something out of us undeniably perfect and flawless.

And now, the only guilt that had every ounce of me under its nasty claws - was dwelling on those regrets that I could never wipe away from my soul; the regrets of breaking your heart only to save you from a perennial heartache, the regrets of causing you pain only to make you open those eyes of yours and see the doom that came along with the thing we called love, the regrets of having to tear myself away from you only to rescue us from that bottomless pit of toxicity and falsities that would have devoured us while we continued to validate that love existed between us, the regrets of having to heed to my mind that kept denying every thread of lie that kept us together, and lastly the regrets of not listening to that heart of mine that still longed to love you like it always had.

Rubbing the callous palms of mine over my face, I let the guilt to burn away my insides, making me hollow once again. Exhaling sharply, I let your face flash before my eyes once more before reminding myself that letting go of the toxic us was probably the foremost right deed that I had ever done in my life. Staring blankly into nothingness, I let every bit of that guilt to consume me in its entirety while waiting for it to fade away with the passing time, before reminding myself that you and I were never meant to be together in the first place and even if we were then all we would ever get was the death of one another while running after the thing that people deemed as the perfect love. Then why despite knowing all, that one question still persisted in the empty & barren depths of my soul?

"That albeit doing the right thing, why did the guilt of regretting the loss of us and whatever that once transpired between us still keep tugging at the cracks of my heart?" - The voice of my fragmented soul questioned while writhing and wrenching painfully from the unceasing flames of the guilt that kept wrecking through every fiber of my being again and again - the guilt of loving you despite losing you forever; the guilt of being safe than sorry forever.