Forever is Longer Than It Sounds- 11

The days were rolling by but my life just felt like a never ending nightmare where the ghosts of my past swam into my every waking hour, only to reappear when I slipped into troubled sleep. One month. Two months. Three months. Never once did I leave my house. Peeta had made good on his promise to keep people checking up on me until I was better. Now, even though my body has been healed, my mind is in a state of disrepair. I'm no stranger to mental insanity. And just because I didn't leave didn't mean I didn't see him. Every day he would leave his home and walk toward the slowly redeveloping town. Then, come nightfall, he would return to his house on the other side of the street in the Victors Village.

Some part of me said it was wrong to look at him like this. That he made it clear that there was to be no more of him in my life. But day after day I found myself gravitating toward the window to catch a glimpse of the person who once held my whole world. Eventually the times were all but set in stone and all it took was a glance at the clock to know it was time to assume my perch in my windowsill.

It was obvious, of course, that he truly no longer loved me. Since he began his daily journey to town and I began my daily journey to the window, not once has he so much as glanced at my house. The house we once shared. It was almost as if, in his eyes, everything that I was a part of or that held a part of me, disappeared. Maybe if I could disappear...

All this time I had taken Peeta's undying love for me for granted. For some foolish reason I truly believed that he would love me forever, no questions asked. Maybe it was because he never gave me any reason to doubt his dedication. Hadn't he been the one who tried to die for me? Wasn't he the one who pledged his undying love for me relentlessly? But all that time I tried to discourage it. Maybe some part of him still feels like it's all fake. Or maybe it was that, for the first time ever, he had seen me when we weren't in the face of war and there weren't people trying to kill us at every turn. He finally got to see the real me.

Originally I was hoping his leaving was just another effect of the hijacking. He wasn't trying to kill me with physical brute, but instead kill me from the inside until my body wasted away into a hallow shell of what used to be a person. Well... if that was his motive, it worked.

Haymitch, who seemed to never leave his house, either, and I had created a system. He would sit at his window and me at mine, sometimes all day, and just look at each other. He didn't know that Peeta had left. He, of course, saw him go into town and come every night, but after Peeta had passed, I usually left my post for the night. Haymitch could easily assume that I was going to greet him. That Peeta and I were still happily ever after. Still reveling in forever. There was no way for him to know that I was plagued with misery.

And then one day it happened. I needed to leave. I put on a pair of old shoes and crossed the street to Peeta's unlocked front door. The shoes felt foreign after padding around barefoot for so long, but I knew now was the only time since Peeta had just left for town and wouldn't be home for the rest of the day.

His house was neat. Clean and perfect. But I noticed that on the walls, where portraits of me once hung, there was nothing. I saw all around canvases with colors splayed across them, but nothing that resembled our times in the area or our times together. Nothing that symbolized that anything had changed since before the reaping except for the fact that now he could afford paint.

What was I doing here? Why was I wandering around Peeta's house? The more I wandered, the more I began to question my motives.

And then I see it. It's a piece of paper with deep creases in the middle of it, as if it had been folded again and again. I approached it hesitantly. I knew it was wrong. I knew I shouldn't read whatever was written in Peeta's swooping handwriting, but I also knew that nothing I could argue in my head would stop me from reading it. With shaking hands, I picked it up and the words swam off the page.

In my eyes I see Cupid's strung bow
For in my heart I do love you so
'Til the last breath of my life does come
In my heart you be the only one

With love in my eyes, so earnest my heart
Knowing our hearts forever beat apart
Sunshine doth bring no light to me
Brightness comes when it's you I see

Your heart, it seems, be troubled and torn
I the bittersweet prick of a rose's thorn
An acquaintance to you is all I be
You mean God's green earth to me

Never your lover, never a friend
Year it shall take my heart to mend
For to you I am not but a man
Who foolishly fights for you will all I can

From my eyes come many tears shed
Knowing we'll never be rightfully wed
I feel for you not with my head or heart
But with my being, my soul, every part

I realized I was holding my breath and let out a gust of air. I saw that he had dated the poem. It was before the Quell. So this was how he felt? Even though we were about to be married, he thought we would never even be friends? Was I that despicable?

"Katniss?" I turned around to see a very confused Peeta glancing down at the paper I still held in my hands.

"Peeta." My mouth was floundering around for more words, trying to for something, but no sound came out.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "And why are you reading that?" He didn't sound angry, which was scary. Really scary. Shouldn't he be angry with me for coming into his house and invading his space? But he wasn't.

I had no answer to his question. I myself didn't know why I was here. "It's beautiful," I stated, regarding the poem. "I guess now the roles are reversed, you know?"

And now I felt my throat closing and my eyes were welling and I had to push past him now because I couldn't let him see me cry. Because I know now why I had to go over to his house. I needed to be sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that Peeta no longer cared for me. And by the renovations and the fact that he showed no sign of longing or care that it was true. That it was all true. Right now to the last word.

Peeta no longer loved me.