Moonlight.

Her eyes beamed moonlight. One so fucking bright I could have just basked in its light. Staring right into my soul, reflecting all the haplessly broken and clumsily sewn pieces put together like a freaking monster Frankenstein. That was what her moonlight reminded me of. A freaking monster lurking underneath this beating heart. Bound loosely by a flimsy rope of conscience.

“Call me butterfly,”she said.

“Why?”

“Because I love butterfly. I can’t wait to spread my wings and fly free,” she smiled.

“Free from what?” I asked.

She looked away. Her fake smile still plastered over her pretty face.

We started talking. Initially to waste time. She was checking her phone from time to time. Telling me in passing stories of her family and childhood. Of her unkind father. Absent and wounding. Of her tiresome childhood looking after her younger siblings when her mother became unreliable. Of having to be uprooted and thrown into oblivion at a tender age. Putting too much onto too soft a soul, she said.

She laughed sometimes as she talked. Threw her head back as the cynical laughter escaped her. Politely concealing an underlying tone of bitterness as she spoke casually of disappointments surrounding her. Perhaps ridiculing her own unrealistic expectation of happiness. She had no trust for this world. Her soul had aged before its time.

All I could hear was pain. Nestling quietly underneath her soft voice.

Yet her bright moonlit eyes were eager as they apprehended mine. She wanted answers. She saw something in me that I could not quite comprehend. She wanted salvation perhaps. And she thought I could deliver.

All the unspoken longings of intimacy and love. Of her thirst for happiness. All of them were laid bare and open before me like a beautiful mashed-up palette of colours on canvas. It was mesmerizing, I could almost touch it and be immersed in its swirl of colours.

Yet she denied her heart. Her vulnerability. She kept them hidden and out of reach. Her fear was almost too palpable. It overwhelmed my senses. She was afraid of herself. Of who she truly was.

Broken.

Her moonlight eyes held me ransom.

It was salaciously tempting, had I not come to my senses. To make her feel good and cared for. To think I could love her and end all her sufferings.

“Butterfly,” I said.

“That is not just how it works. I can only reflect the truth. And the truth is you don’t even know what love means,” I spoke softly. My hand reached out to touch her cold rigid fingers. She flinched.

She did not like what she heard.

Her moonlit eyes bored into me with disbelief. She was no longer generous with her smile. I withdrew my hand because everything else I was about to say would only hurt her further. She needed to retreat into a safe space away from my touch, my words, and my thoughts.

I wanted to tell her that it was not her fault. But she had been hurt for so long that she would not be able to recognise happiness even if it stares at her in the face.

She just did not love herself enough. She would continue to inflict pain on herself and on others again and again.

An impending perpetual cycle of heartbreaks.

Her moonlight eyes left my face. She checked her phone in the pretext of hiding her anger. The monster in me recognised her anger almost instantly. Too familiar. Too ferocious. Like a wounded animal, she got up and turned away from me. Left without a single word.

Walking nonchalantly into a shattered sense of delusional security.

I wished she would find strength to confront the truth someday. That she was not a mere collection of her wounds. I wished for her all the beautiful endings that this life could offer. For her to finally spread her wings and fly into the bright blue sky that awaited her.

But in the meantime, this hurt like fuck.