Guardian of Dara.

I’d seen Dara’s blue eyes quite often shine this magnifcentally before, she’s got a stripe of dark auburn that runs through her left iris, that dazzles onlookers daily - but when her aura’s fanning out an air of hopeful exuberance, she’s been charmed herself. As the pattern goes, this aura of all glistening splendour, predicatably debuts days before her heart falls apart. I sat directly opposite her, chewing my mouthful of toast fourty times, nervously vowing to stomach no more, as I was preparing for her gutful. The burnt edges of my bread infused my nostrils with a waft more palatable than what would come next.

I wouldn’t know how many times her heart’s been shattered, just like I wouldn’t know how many scars are on my hands, because, over the years it became both ridiculous and ridiculing of me to keep count of her endless attempts. I couldn’t let her fall alone. My runaway mind darted back to when I called in a prop for me to observe the outwardly expression of what treasure was buried in the left side of her chest. Ruptures were everywhere. That excuse for a night, which was actually morning, when crushing her crystal wine glass was a metaphor, for the brokenness that surrounded all aspects of her life, seemed too soon ago. I suppose, the cuts had turned white, though, meaning they had healed. I didn’t purposely intend on grasping the flute too tight, it just happened, much like she does to men, in spite of her intellect being sharp, this illness lands her in all sorts of trouble. Dara’s last oxyytocin overdose was only two short months prior, mopping up minor floods of tears from her floor seemed like yesterday.

I pulled her Victorian door behind me that day, as I left wondering, that windswept night-actually-morning-turn-midday, why I didn’t live in a sunnier city, with a brighter best friend and less water, less tears, less rain and less pain, but this was London, Islington to be precise and her next devastating story was only ever an eyelid flutter away. When she’s under the illusion of her interpretation of being in love, she falls, like a gullible soul does time and time again from heaven, who’s been encouraged to wrap themselves in a human body despite the conditions on Earth. Seeing as though she’s here, and seeing as though she fell in the beginning anyway, she promised herself to keep falling in love, as this is her pilgrimige. To never stop falling in love. It is a disease, in case you weren’t aware, addiction is a disease, no more or less than Cancer, and her addiction is love. So she’s sick, sicker than your average woman, she’s got it bad, a rare case of a common disease.

But Dara is the only woman I know who looks red carpet worthy when she’s ill, which is, more often than not.

“And next weekend, he said he’s going to drive us to the Country for a weekend of cheese and wine! Can you believe it’s been a month and we haven’t slept together? He seems vastly interested, calling me everyday”, Zara intensley and excitedly revealed as she ran her fake nails through her thick, beach waved ash coloured hair.

“Zara. How’s therapy?”

I knew she was an addict. But my compassion was too ripe, myself an artist and a no longer practicing psychotherapist, my patience fluctuated between a Saint and a twenty-seven-year-old fiery redhead with wings. Quite often, my spare time consisted of either actively listening to Dara’s latest new insight into the wonderland of penis’ and promises, or, kindly dashing around to find the colourful debris of her kaleidescope heart, in my latest painting, in the story I was reading, in the movie I was watching or in the song that was playing. Her knees were exclusive to hard surfaces, as she proposed often to polished kitchen floorboards at 3a.m, proposing that perhaps, this would be the last time she would try to cure her disease with the energy that always made her sick, but that was too much to expect, that she could stop, as the daughter of a drug addicted Mother, all that was most familiar to her were intense cycles of highs and lows. Forcing her to live out her terminal diagnosis of human, making waves of promises that would continually crash. I couldn’t let her fall alone.