The heartbroken in-a-haze look in her eyes covered her face like a black veil.
It really wore her down.
The newness.
The sameness.
The nothingness.
He was dead to her.
But his ghost still haunted her brain.
His demons still consumed her soul.
And she still mourned his loss.

She remembered when his father died.
That was when it happened.
A part of him died too.
At the funeral, she sat by his side and held his hand.
She told him she loved him.
She said, “I’m sorry.”
And he stared blankly into this deep abyss, this nothingness,
And he replied, “It’s okay.”
As if it were her fault.
And since the day he buried his father, he never looked at her the same way again.
He never looked at anyone the same way again.
As if it were their fault.
As if they were the ones who killed his father.
As if he didn’t die because it was simply a slip up.
A mishap.
Nature’s way of telling a too-young man who should have lived that it was his time to go.

“It’s okay,” he said when he should have been the one who was apologizing.
And that’s how it ended.
She apologized for being there.
He told her it was okay that he needed to detach himself from everything.
From everyone who was part of that time before.
He wanted to start a new life.
Like it never happened.
Or almost.

And a month later, she was replaced.
By a girl with the same features.
Same hair.
Same smile.
Same eyes.
But a different approach.
This new girl looked at a crowd and saw nothing but herself.
She looked in a mirror and thought that was all there was.
She looked at a friend and saw not a person, but another person to show herself to.
And make them think that everything was more than okay.

But all she’d ever be was the new girl.
Part of the abyss.
Part of the nothingness.
Part of the crowd.
She’d never be someone who would really make things okay.

And there he stood.
All shiny and new.
With his new girl.
With his new self.
And there stood the first girl.
The real girl.
The one who could say she was sorry.
The one who knew it wasn’t okay.

She managed to take off the veil.
She walked past the strangers.
With her peripheral vision blocked by the blackness,
She rolled through the intersection.
And he embraced the newness.
The emptiness.
The rest stop on the highway.