His skin was a canvas, stretched tight over bones that seemed too sharp, too delicate, to hold up all the weight of the world he carried. The ink, dark and swirling, etched into his flesh like a curse, marked him in ways no one else could see. But I saw it—_oh, how I saw it_—those symbols that seemed to move, to breathe, when the light hit just right, or when he laughed too hard, that laugh that never quite reached his eyes.

At first, they were just lines, thin and barely there, like scars from a battle he never spoke about. But then, over time, _they grew,_ weaving intricate patterns that looked like they were alive, like they were trying to tell me something, something I didn’t want to understand. They danced across his wrists, his forearms, crawling up his neck like a shadow, like a secret he couldn’t keep from me, no matter how hard he tried.

I wanted to ask him, _so many times,_ but the words always caught in my throat, tangled up in the soft petals of what should’ve been love—_if only he’d let me. _It’s funny, isn’t it? How you can know someone _inside and out,_ can memorize every inch of their skin, every twist and turn of their smile, but still be a stranger to their heart?

I guess that’s what we were—_strangers, soulmates,_ or maybe something in between. But it didn’t matter what I called it because _he didn’t feel the same._ And that’s the cruelest part, the part that makes my chest ache in a way I can’t explain, like thorns pressing in from the inside, wrapping around my ribs until I can’t breathe, until all I can do is choke on the flowers that he’ll never see.

_Hanahaki,_ they call it. The disease of unrequited love, _where you cough up petals_ instead of blood, where the thing that kills you isn’t a bullet or a knife but a feeling, _a goddamn feeling_ that you can’t cut out, no matter how much you want to.

And his symbols—they move, _they change,_ as if they know, as if they’re mocking me with their beautiful, shifting forms, while my own skin remains _blank,_ untouched by anything other than the pain I can’t let go. I wonder if he sees it, the way I see him, the way I always see him, even when he’s not there.

Does he know that every time I cough, it’s his name that comes up with the petals, that every time I dream, _it’s of him_ and those _godforsaken symbols_ that I’ll never understand? Does he feel the weight of it, the way I do, or is he as oblivious as ever, lost in whatever world those tattoos are dragging him into?

Sometimes I think they’re alive, those symbols, like they’re feeding on him, on us, on this thing that was never meant to be. And I wonder if one day, _they’ll consume him_ completely, take him away from me before I’ve ever really had him.

But then, maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen. _Maybe it’s fate, destiny,_ or whatever bullshit people like to believe in. Maybe I was never meant to have him, never meant to be anything more than the one who watched, the one who _ached_ and never got better.

So I’ll keep watching, keep waiting for the day when those symbols finally take him away, and I’ll keep coughing up these damn petals until there’s nothing left but an empty shell where my heart used to be. Because that’s all I’ve ever been to him, isn’t it?

Just a shell, _a ghost,_ a thing to be pitied and forgotten. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s what I deserve.

But still, I can’t help but wonder—if only for a moment—what it would be like if he looked at me the way I look at him, if he _saw me_ the way I see him. If those symbols on his skin spelled out _my name,_ instead of the silence that always hangs between us.

But that’s just a dream, and dreams, like flowers, _wither and die._