on discovering the epicenter of a hurt-

she sat staring into his soul, as he attempted to numb the pain sip by sip.
he used that liquid to escape, to affect him.
she wanted to show him it only served as a false dilution, and
what he needed was a permanent fix.

soon the sips became gulps, and at last a chug.
wash it down. wash down the ache, echoed his demon.

can you see i'm hurting? can anyone see my pain?

his silence filled the room louder than the actual words being said. the conversations being had.

i hear you. i hear you.  is what she wanted to say to him. but he sat in a daze, thinking...thinking...thinking.
trying to feel.               and she wondered: how do you resuscitate a living thing?
where does one even begin?

and his eyes, they were windows; piercing, piercing windows. it wasn't until that moment she discovered eyes could cut deeper than words. that eyes could penetrate a barrier of language; translating pain, feeling, and the lack of.

six years he spent loving a girl who could not and will not love him back.
six long, wasted years.                     when does one reach the point of no return?

then he uttered the following words to her,

                                                                  who is your muse? 

how was she supposed to answer without making his hurt bigger?
my muse? as if deflecting the question by rearranging it would change the subject.
perhaps manipulation in this way was the only advantage of his pseudo-anesthetic.

he asked her again,
                                                                    who is he or she?

and it was then she realized,

there is no science to this. there is no secret equation that those who have found love know, and those who have yet to find love have missed somewhere along the way. and the latter of the two types of people shouldn't resent the former. and the former mustn't hold what they have above the latter.
it all comes down to timing; everything is held within its frame.

love, you have to know when it is time let go. she said to him.
you have to recognize when it is time to move on. and six years- o that is an awfully long time to ache.

there it was.    the answer to the question she had been wrestling with.
it's so painfully beautiful how she came to it over three-thousand miles away from the hurts epicenter.

and that was the problem with him too; he had mistaken the cause as something external, when all along its source was within.           he was the one not letting go.
he was the one torturing himself.            

                                                   he was his own demon.