She walked along, and she listened to how the rose petals fell behind her, beside her, in front— where she could see the red love.

"We love you! We just love you, and love you," they said.

She smiled, and she felt the webs inside her fall and the dust brush off the shelf and everything shine like the sun on the stars in the most un-cliché way she could imagine.

She reached for the sun and for those stars that claimed they loved her and watched as they stopped shining, and they turned to sick, black rubble that fell on her face and suffocated her heart.

The rubble turned to glass and cut her, drawing invisible red blood that spilled in the night when she wanted to sleep and spilled in her mind during the day when she needed to think.

"Can you please, please, just apologize? I just want to hear you say sorry— all I really want is for you to tell me exactly what I already know. Can you do that for me?"

But the stars just hugged her again, and they embraced her, and they shone a path that she tiptoed on. Through rivers, she passed, until the glass fell from her skin and trickled down with the river, faster and faster, and then not at all.

"I don't trust you. You say you love me, but you don't. And you act like you care, but you can't, I mean, how could you, when I can see that you don't and you won't?" she asked.

The stars didn't respond for a while. They didn't apologize, and they didn't give her any sign that they would shine for her forever.

So she trudged along the river, slowly, bit by bit. And soon, she met up with the pile of glass that was waiting for her along the way. It cut her so deep, and she lay bleeding in the river.

The stars made her blood glisten even brighter in their light, and she closed her eyes, aware that the river stopped running. She closed her eyes for such a long time that the webs and the dust returned, and her heart grew old and grey.

She lay silently, for eternity, until finally, she slowly pricked the glass out of her skin, and she was able to brush her hair back and open her eyes.

"Can you please, please, make sure you never shine for me again...Ever?" she asked.