Friends help friends clean up their messes. They pick up the dirt and throw it into the trashcan. Friends don't judge. They don't tell you it's okay but secretly in their mind think that you're an ass. They know what you did was wrong and they'll tell you when you can handle it but they won't if that's what you need to know. They don't tell your secrets around, they don't tell other people what you don't want other people to know. They don't ignore you, and they don't ignore you when you ignore them.

Every friend is different. Bad things can happen sometimes and people can tell other people sometimes and break the friendship code. Friends sometimes lie and friends sometimes gossip behind your back and stab you then. But after all that they've told you how can you not trust them? Is there even a friendship without that amount of trust? You don't trust me. At all. I'm not the kind of girl who can live with talking bad about you and then smile in front of you and tell you that you're ma good friend. Cause I'm not that kind of person.

How am I supposed to let you know?

That when people ask about you I tell them you're okay. And that when they think what you do is wrong I tell them that we can't judge people like that, especially friends. How do I tell you that you make me smile even though you make the people around me hurt so bad they need to tell me? That sometimes it gets to me when I'm picking up the dirt and I don't want to tell you about it because it would be mean. How do I tell you that I'm not that kind of friend you pass in the corridors and say hi to and forget three months later? That I don't backstab you and tell your secrets to all the world to see.

I want to tell you so many things but I don't. What we've been saying is a friendship isn't one beyond the laughs and the inside jokes and the funny stories and the work. You don't tell me what's going wrong and then expect me to smile and be happy that I know nothing about you. And then you come and get mad at me for not knowing anything about you and for trying to clean up your mess. I know you're frustrated and I'll be your punching bag if you need to, just tell me why you're punching me and I'll gladly let you do it.

Tell me what you think so I can help you.

I feel like a hypocrite.

I wake up to find myself staring agape into the endless horizon, into what's beyond. Wondering about what's after the end and what's after the beginning. I don't know if I am in between, but it's such a long way until I find out. I want to give up and let the sea pull me back, pull me back to what's past. To bring me back to shore and feel the sand between my toes so I know I'm safe. I want to start over again.

But these waves push me forward, the current swirls harder, and I can't look back. I know there's a world underneath my feet, a world all around me, but I can't find the one place that my body fits, space to matter. I can't find where I'm supposed to be, but I'm stranded.

The wind carries his screams from over the shore, from the other end of the world. I do not see him but I know he is there, yelling out so I know his pain. But I can't hear him because my foot is in the sea, and I'm walking slowly towards where he is, one step at a time.

I am coming.
Now there is no more shore.

I stand beside the highway, on top of the world. I look but I can't see the end. The sound of cars driving past fills my ear. For a moment that is all I hear, because my mind is blank; because nothing exists anymore besides the sound of ice forming as the temperature drops lower.

Lower.

It's negative, and the air around me is colder. As the cars put on their tire chains I pull my windbreaker closer, folding my arms. I want to sit because I'm so tired, but it feels like the only way I won't be is to run across the grass and jump off the cliff just so I'll never feel the strain of my body, never feel gravity pulling me, like all else, down.

I can't stand because I'm so tired, so I climb the tree and watch from above, watching the world go by, the wind making music with the sea and the trees, and I think.

Life is very pretty.
His face scrunches up because it is snowing.

We are in the car, him in the drivers seat and I am riding shotgun. We drive past snow-covered plains, trees of many kinds, the kinds that you get at home on Christmas. We pass mountains fully blanketed in snow, and I open the window by a fraction. The cold air enters the car and his nose is cold, his hand lies on the gearstick, frozen. It is June, but it is snowing. Yesterday was my birthday and he gave me flowers. I turn around to look at them in the back seat, when he asks if I am hungry. I say no, but I hear my stomach complaining.

No. I'm not.

We pass cars with snow piled on top of their hoods, of happy families who will go home to a fireplace, of couples who will brew each other's coffee, of old age who love to settle with a book on their lap. We pass cars but all he can do is smile at me and tell me that he's sorry.

I can't tell him that I forgive him.

But I can't tell him that I don't.

We get to a small town and sit by the playground. He puts me on a swing and we play for awhile, the cold air whooshing between my hair. I smile the first time in ages. Then he starts to talk, and I start to feel the same hurt in my heart. I feel it bleeding because something is going to happen, and we can't do anything about it. So I leave him, and as I get off the snow sloshes about around my boots, freezing my perfectly manicured feet. I hug myself because no one else will.

I love him but I can't turn around and say goodbye because I would just break down.

Cry.

It is sunset again.

Now I am alone. I don't have a license but I'm sitting in the drivers seat, one hand on the wheel. The temperature off the thermometer says zero degrees, but it feels so much colder. It feels like the world's freezed over. The sun is going down tonight.

The world's changed. What was once blue turned orange, what was green turned white. The clouds disappear but my breath still comes out in fog. Nothing is the same, everything is different. I look down at my shoes and brush away the snow - there is no more dirt because I cannot see much ground. No more gravel crunching beneath my feet. No more starts, no more beginnings, no more in betweens; now everything is the end. I stop on the highway and climb onto the roof of the car so I can breathe because inside it is suffocating. The world looks white tonight and I want to go back to the rain, the trees, I want to breathe again. I want to walk my endless stretch of road, swim my neverending marathon to get to where he is. I want to go back, to go back before everything started, when there was nothing but me, but now there is everything but me. Everything is here but I am alone.

A car honks at me because he needs to get through and there is too much snow. I climb down from the roof and get into the drivers seat. I start the engine. I turn around to tell the car to overtake me, but as I do something catches my eye.

A glimpse of the roses set my heart ablaze. In this cold, freezing weather I feel my heart burn inside me. Inside him. For him. There, in the back seat, sat my flowers, perfectly innocent; as if nothing ever happened and everything will. The car honks at me but I don't care. I pick up the flowers and breathe in their smell, remembering him in the car seat, his scrunched-up face as he smells the snow, his smile as he swings in the playground. All of a sudden my face is no longer frozen, the ice thawed by my blazing hot tears sliding down from it - and nothing is there besides everything in my head.

It is the end.

I shift the gearstick and drive.

Leaving him behind, my heart along with him. Leaving behind the sea, the sand, the snow. To go back to gravel, to go back to the beginning, back to what once was, when nothing had ever been. I drive ahead into the sunset and I tell myself that I am strong enough.

But I look at the rearview mirror and he is there, watching me.

Back up, back up, take another chance.
Don't you mess up, mess up, I don't wanna lose you.
Wake up, wake up, this ain't just a thing that you just give up, give up.

Don't you say that I'd be better off, better off.
Sittin by myself and wonderin, don't just leave me hangin on.
If I'm just better off, better off without you boy.

Don't just leave me hangin on.

Slowly. Surely.

Not for long, now. Not for long.

And then you're gone.

Just like that.