Please wait for me.

'Please wait for me, my little Monika!' The glow of her phone stared back at her in the dimly lit streets as the words she never wanted to see again appeared.

She clicked on it again. She didn't mean to, but as she absent-mindedly scrolled through her messages to alleviate her boredom, she clicked on his messages again. She didn't need to look at the name of the sender to know.

She didn't need reminders of him. Not when his face haunted her dreams and her memories of their time together replayed in her mind every waking moment.

'Please wait for me, my little Monika!'

The pain in her heart. She wanted it to stop. She wanted it gone.

Her forefinger moved across the screen, hovering above the clear white icon of a wastebasket. It would be so easy. Delete his conversation. Delete him from her life.

She looked down at her hand. It was trembling. She tried to stop it, but it was insistent in its disobedience, refusing to stop.

She let her arms go slack, falling limply to her sides.

She watched as the light of the gas lamp danced and flickered above her.

She wished it could've been that simple. To fall out of love with the tap on the screen. But it wasn't. And she was still in love with a dead man, and a widow at twenty-four.

"Don't go," she had asked him on their last night together. It came out as a whisper. They laid in bed together facing each other, his face mere inches, if that, away from hers. He cupped her face with his hand.

"You know I have to."

"I know you can run away with me. Please," She pressed her forehead against the crook of his neck, “don't leave me behind”.

"I will never leave you," he said wrapping his arms around her. "Just wait for me Monika,” she felt the hug tighten, “my dear, sweet, Monika."

Around her, her fellow travellers continued onward with their journeys; families enjoying themselves, workers returning home after an exhausting day, friends living life to the fullest as they drank the evening away. She felt like a stone, stubbornly holding on against the flow of life, refusing to move on, as everyone else did.

'Wait for me.'

That was what she was doing. But would he have wanted her to move on, or to keep following the instructions of a dead man?

No, he wasn't "dead" the military notifier who knocked on her door had assured her.

"Missing in Action."

She allowed herself to hope at first. She waited at the train station with the rest; family, lovers, friends of those sent off, as the first soldiers began trickling back from the war train by train. Wednesdays. It was always a Wednesday night.

Then the trains slowed down, first to every two weeks, then four. It was routine at that point. She still put on her dress, pulled on her boots, and waited patiently at the gate, hoping for their gazes to meet from afar and for her to be able to fling herself into his embrace, just like in the movies.

Then the trains stopped altogether. She waited a few more times, hoping to catch sight of stragglers. Only a few. But it was never him.

She began to search. She called the line for inquiries about casualties. Nothing. She asked the families of other soldiers if he had been mentioned in their calls and letters. He hadn't. She finally asked his friends who went with him when they returned. Their pained refusals to answer and look her in the eye told her what she already knew.

‘Please wait for me, my little Monika!’ was his last message to her before the messages stopped. Monika breathed out and let the tears soak her scarf as the crowds continued to pass her by.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"Would you like sugar with your coffee Miss?" the doe-eyed girl asked her. She shook her head at the waitress, who left with a smile as she went off to complete her order.

She found refuge in a small quiet cafe, tucked away in a corner, wiping off her tears before her make-up ran. She didn't recognise it from the outside, but they came here before, once. Before they were married. They had been sitting across the room from her current spot, though the table they sat at was no longer there.

She looked down at the little golden band wrapped tightly around her ring finger. “Yours forever”, he said when he got on one knee and asked her to marry him. She didn't know if he meant the ring or himself.

No, she should've screamed at her two-year-younger self. No. Don't let a husband chain you down. Don't let anyone chain you down.

'Yes.'

She said yes.

Of course she did. Why wouldn't she have said yes?

He made her happy. She felt safe with him. Content. Loved. She never had the best relationship with her family, which was why she had moved away at the first opportunity; first to a boarding school, then aboard to different countries, but with him... The idea of having a family didn't seem so abstract. So... foreign.

The waitress returned, with her coffee this time along with the ever-present smile. Monika thanked the girl before she returned behind the counter.

"Let me know if you need anything else~," she said with a slight bow before walking away.

She stared down at her reflection in the dark gleaming liquid as she held the warm cup with both hands.

Who was this woman who stared back at her?

---------------------------------------------------------------

1) Monika had been a wanderer. A survivor, she told herself. Moving from one place to another since childhood. First with her family, then alone. She moved away from danger. If you were never close to danger, you were never in danger. Simple as that.

2) She followed whichever fortune favoured. An opportunist, some snorted at her, as if it was a bad thing. So what? Her family was never financially secure growing up, moving constantly. She swore she would never allow herself to be poor again. It didn't matter what she did to that end; nothing illegal, crime was dangerous, but anything within reason by hook or crook.

3) Her husband had been her opposite.

From his entrenched attachment to his homeland; his locale, which appeared beyond reason to Monika, to his naive belief of how everything would turn out just fine if he worked hard and long enough at something. That was the world his parents crafted for him as he grew into an adult, just as her parents created her world, or lack of, as she did the same.

In hindsight, she should've known the second she heard of the draft that he would hold true to what his country demanded of him and that the idea of fleeing as she would've done in his place would never have been more than a fleeting thought in his mind.

She had dismissed this simple and dour man when she first met him.

Weak. Decadent. Men like him can afford to live with luxuries such as pride, she thought disdainfully.

The university they both attended was a testament to their difference; this was an afterthought for him, men of his station went to university, that was just the done thing. For her, it would be a lifeline into a career that would set her free from her financial woes forever. He'd worked nary a day in his life, whereas she had to work shift upon shift in badly paid jobs in sleazy hotels and bars to save up the funds she had needed to move and live here.

When he asked her out Monika said yes. To her, he was nothing more than potentially-pleasant company and a means to a free dinner. Just one of many in a string of one-two date boyfriends.

Three.

She had set three as the maximum number of dates she allowed herself to go on with a man, however hard they made her heart flutter. Three, for the most special of men. She couldn't remain too attached. Surviving was harder when you had to look out for someone else. That was just what life had taught her, never let anyone too close to your heart; friends were fine, they could help you when you needed help. Acquaintances were better, it didn't hurt as much when she had to move away, or they did. A partner just wasn't a line she ever wanted to cross.

So when he asked, she responded without a second thought: "No."

He didn't fume with anger, or even ask why like some of the others did. He merely nodded, and they parted ways amicably that night.

That would be the end of it, or so she thought.

From time to time when she saw him around the university, she saw him stealing glances at her from the corner of her eye, with his puppy-dog eyes.

At first, it confused her. Then it annoyed her. Wasn't he fine with their breakup? Was he not the one who nodded in stoic understanding when she told him she couldn't? The longing glances continued for weeks until she roughly seized him by the arm one day after breaking into a sprint to catch him as he was walking away from the campus, down a sparsely travelled corridor.

(She later learned that she had been one of the few girls he had ever dated, and the only one he went out with more than once. He didn't know how to react to rejection.)

She rounded on him and demanded they talk. When he wasn't forthcoming with much beyond short curt replies, she decided to take control of the conversation. She was sure she sounded like a fool, slowly taking back her words and telling him that if he wanted, perhaps they could go out a few more times. He rarely smiled, but when he did, like in that dusky corridor, it lit up the whole room.

(She would never forget their wedding, or when she said "yes" on the bridge. When he couldn't stop smiling.)

Monika didn't know why she gave this plain boy of a man treatment that no other ever got from her before him. She allowed him to take her on one more date. Then a fifth too. Then more after that.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

There were two types of people in the world Monika knew. Fools and survivors.

1) Survivors did whatever was necessary to live.

2) Fools let pretty ideals rule their actions.

Fools didn't tend to last as long as survivors. By falling in love with a fool, she became a fool herself.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

She closed the door to their apartment, shutting out the light of the corridor behind her.

Her apartment.

There was no they. Not anymore.

The walk home was quiet. As always, the city was filled with light and life, vibrant and colourful.

She slumped back against the door from where she stood as her knees gave in, sliding down the wood until she was sitting on the ground. She gazed aimlessly into the unlighted room as the light of the moon shone in from the great window in front of her desk. She felt lost. It felt surreal. How did she let all this happen?

On the windowsill, stood a frame with a picture from a week before he left; they stood side by side, he in his soldier's uniform, her in her favourite prim violet dress, in front of a small chapel.

She stared at the photograph and got up instinctively, moving to the table.

She swept everything off the desk with a clatter and slammed her palms onto the pinewood. The lamp shattered behind her and books and pens tumbled onto the floor behind her.

She finally let out as a guttural scream from the bottom of her lungs as she felt hot tears run down her cheeks.

"You left me!" she screamed hoarsely at the figure in the photo.

You made me weak. It's your fault. You changed me, were the unvoiced accusations that spun rapidly through her mind. Her tears splashed onto her hands.

"I hate you..." her voice cracked.

Monika didn't know who that, any of it, was directed to: was it to the dead man, or to the foolish little widow who let herself change?

After several minutes of crying, or at least what she thought were several minutes, she walked into the adjoined bedroom and collapsed onto the bed.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

When they got married, she didn't notice herself change, but she did. Cleaning, cooking, and other house chores. He shared half the burden, but she almost felt like a housewife, something she never thought she would be. Settled.

(That night she dreamed the same dream she had many times before he went away; opening the door to welcome him as he came back from work after she did, dinner close to ready behind in, as little boys and girls sporting a mixture of his brown eyes and her blonde hair ran out to receive their father.)

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

When he had told her that he was going to register for the draft offhand, she had been sitting on the other end of the sofa across from him, reading a book. The implications didn't quite set in yet, and looking up from her book, she only quietly nodded.

Like an understanding, demure wife, she thought in distaste. She regretted not speaking up then. She regretted letting all this, change her from her old ways. Perhaps it had been because he deferred to her in most decisions in their life together, that she started acting the way she did to force him into being more assertive.

(Later, she realised she felt hurt. Did he not think that she, his wife, was privy to such a decision before he made it?)

If she had said "No," would he have listened to her and waited until the draft came to him? Would that have meant that he would've been somewhere else, as safe as one could've been at war? The old her would've firmly told him "No," and forced him into escaping from it all. No, the old her wouldn't be there at all, chained with golden rings to a husband in a modest apartment embedded in a nice suburb they had brought together with large parts from both their salaries.

The war hadn't come to the city then. It had never come actually, hardly noticeable at all bar the absence of the young men. It had been as it always had been; full of light and beauty.

The only grim reminder the war had happened at all was a new memorial outside the train station, listing all the men who died far from home, their names carved in stone on little slabs hung onto the larger monument. Every time new plaques were hung; fresh flowers would be placed at the foot of the memorial anew.

(As if flowers were any comfort for someone who had lost a son, a brother, a father, or a husband.)

It was only a matter of time "Missing in Action" statuses were changed to be "Presumed Killed in Action" she had learnt from one of the men in his squad she spoke with. There was only one week left before her husband's plaque would hang along with the rest.

She had seen many others those times she walked to the train station to wait; those who had lost loved ones, placing flowers and sobbing in the arms of others who knew the deceased. Her husband had been strong, as simple as he might’ve been.

'He will survive and come back,' she told herself.

She had never thought she would be among them.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

The old couple running the flower shop had been pleasant; all kind words and smiles. They didn't ask or pry why Monika had brought white lilies; the bouquet of choice for mourners; just understanding, sympathetic eyes for the widow.

They clearly adored each other; their love unweathered by the years, surrounded by the life they built up with each other: the wife manning the counter as her husband moved back and forth, nipping stems and swiftly swathing orders in their neat blue wrapping paper.

Did they look like that too?

Would they have looked like that?

The memorial stone was quiet today. She knelt down and laid her flowers among the wilting ones.

Monika looked at her phone.

'Please wait for me, my little Monika!'

She loved him.

She loves him.

In the corner was his profile picture; the same photograph of them that stood on their windowsill. She felt a small twinge of pain in her chest when she looked at their faces, as if someone wrapped their arms around her heart and hugged. They were so happy.

(A few of the other messages they sent to each other caught her eye as she swiped. ‘I love you’s and ‘I miss you’s from both spouses, the soft glow of the screen giving her light in the twilight.)

She got rose back up, putting the device away in her pocket. She's strong. She won't cry here. She would live, for both of them, and he would live on in her heart.

Monika turned towards her home. She didn't know why, but she turned to look at the station entrance one last time before returning home.

There he was, at the entrance of the station, standing there in his uniform, the lights behind him shimmering as their gazes met. He looked worn and tired, but otherwise the same as she last saw him, exactly as he was in her memories.

"I -," Her words failed as her voice broke in her throat.

"Monika," he gave her a tired smile. "I'm home."