I am ridden from my thoughts once he looks at me with a questioning look in his skeletal brown eyes. “I know you’re not happy,” he states. His eyes wander over the detail of my body, but not with thirsty look like most teenage pigs I’ve come to meet… But caringly, a difficult thing to do for disconsolate hearts like mine.

 “Is that so?” I pretended that his sudden words hadn’t fazed me a bit when, in reality, broke every bone in me.

“As they always said,” his eyes are now dead, “Fake smiles only go so far, you know?”

“Really?” I respond, admiring how easily he could make dead feelings alive as he nodded.

“Aren’t fake smiles the only smiles? Because no one sees through mine,” I smiled.

“Who comforts you when you’re sad?” He asked me, caressing my hand that I, surprisingly, hadn’t removed yet. His warmth was so unfamiliar, so new, that his touch was desired by my cold skin that was not handled, not used, nor tasted.  

Him, I wanted to respond since it was true; instead, I warmly answered him with another bare truth, “Only the thriving yet dying presence of loneliness in my heart.”