( heartbreak moves in inches, ash finds. not miles.
it doesn’t feel real the first 24 hours. existence without embry is futile — is less than futile, ash finds. he has to remember how to breathe. his heart doesn’t beat but it does clot, like an angry, infected wound. every time he thinks about embry it picks the scab in one messy tear, a river flow of emotions dumped in the empty cavity of his chest. he remembers. one time, embry got him to share a cigarette in the backdrop woods of their army camp, and laughed while ash coughed with the wheezing pain of smoke in his lungs, punching him boyishly on the shoulder.
ash remembers thinking, no one in the world has warmer hands than embry moore.
except, they aren’t warm now. they’re cold and gray, the fingernails pale and lifeless, lips dry and cracked. embry moore, the life of every party. embry moore, every good army boy’s hall pass. embry moore, the man ash would’ve doodled little hearts around his name and written mr. ashley moore in his school boy notebooks if they met a decade earlier.
ash spends all his energy on crying, until there aren’t any tears left. exhaustion forces him to sleep, curled up in a ball on the floor in his room, thinking about embry’s hands. )
— one of six.
it doesn’t feel real the first 24 hours. existence without embry is futile — is less than futile, ash finds. he has to remember how to breathe. his heart doesn’t beat but it does clot, like an angry, infected wound. every time he thinks about embry it picks the scab in one messy tear, a river flow of emotions dumped in the empty cavity of his chest. he remembers. one time, embry got him to share a cigarette in the backdrop woods of their army camp, and laughed while ash coughed with the wheezing pain of smoke in his lungs, punching him boyishly on the shoulder.
ash remembers thinking, no one in the world has warmer hands than embry moore.
except, they aren’t warm now. they’re cold and gray, the fingernails pale and lifeless, lips dry and cracked. embry moore, the life of every party. embry moore, every good army boy’s hall pass. embry moore, the man ash would’ve doodled little hearts around his name and written mr. ashley moore in his school boy notebooks if they met a decade earlier.
ash spends all his energy on crying, until there aren’t any tears left. exhaustion forces him to sleep, curled up in a ball on the floor in his room, thinking about embry’s hands. )