Her

When did it start? Was it the day when she went on her way to save a heart? Or when her frail hands that led me to feel or her eyes that were emotionless but had warmth if you dug deep enough. She knew me more than anyone else, she was just a girl like everyone else, so when did it start? When I decided to break her heart and even if I did it a thousand times she’ll stand by me until she’d waste any dimes. You are not just some girl I know, you are the same girl that made me grow in this place where I thought was cruel but it became beautiful because you were there. 

She had been a girl that I’ve seen in the streets, stores, she had been everywhere. Each time that I passed her in the streets she would have a book in her hand, her phone in her pocket, white wires that followed all the way up to her ears. She looked tired, sad, alone, and I had always wondered why. From the places where she would relive memories to the heartbreak that she would have I would always find myself with her. I’ve seen her countless times, never once was she anything but an interesting painting full of sadness and guilt but somehow It was like I knew her, but how?

We were strangers but it seemed with memories. On some days I too would sit beneath the tree pressing my ear to the hardy bark listening closely to the earth. Active bees buzzed with tendency busying themselves with the sweet pollen from all the flowers bobbing their heads in the summer breeze. Like the flowers themselves she was agile, adapting and fast-growing leaving a trail of soulful hue for me to follow, shades of purple, orange and red intermingly like a mixture of acrylic paint so yet I still couldn’t understand why she felt brilliance, serene and pain for the things around me.  

I saw her again just like I had hundreds of times, it was cold and it was dark. She was at a park looking at a grey lake, she was forever in a sea of darkness. Nothing was harmless, she was tired, sad, alone and I always wondered why. Her world seems to be empty, the voices around me are unclear, I always searched for her and every time I found her, she always wore the same expression. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t find where her tears had gone off to. There was familiarity with each person that passed my body, it had been happening since I saw her. But none of it mattered because of the things I felt when I glimpsed at where she would go and how she would feel when she was there. My mind was clear now, it wasn’t full of voices and everything made sense. Why she was always painted with sadness and why she visited all the places she went to, I knew that all her pain was because of me. It was like I knew her, but now I know why. 

She was tired, tired because remembering all the times I was with her, all those memories where I would tell her that I loved her destroyed her. She remembered how good it had felt to run up a hill with me and how breathtaking the view was from sitting on that hill. The tree let flowers bloom as it cried many petals around the earth, the last vestiges of her beauty waiting for a precocious gust to carry them spinning them to their rest. Each petal, papery and thin, lies on the newly golden grass, it’s veins glowing pink in the setting sun. 

“I love you”

She was sad, sad because no one held me like she did, kissed me like she did, know me like she did. But I wasn’t ready to see red, I was blue and I was just not ready to feel purple. Love was what I needed the most but it seemed that it was the thing I would least understand.  

And she was most definitely alone. Most definitely alone because two broken people don’t fix each other. It was easier for me to destroy things than to make them. She no longer smiled, no longer cared that she was alone, she only thought about how I made her feel when I was with her. She would sit by a tree… our tree, the one where we would enjoy the view and the fresh air that cured our minds of all our problems.

“What am I to you” 

“I don’t know, I guess you just have to wait to find out”

She never did though, she never found out how I had felt about her.

I don’t want to die, I want to be here with her to see her smile one more time, to touch her soft skin, to kiss her, to love her. 

“Please don’t leave me” 

Words that haunted me when she found my lifeless body. 

“I love you” 

she says, as her voice cracked, eyes turning red from the tears that kept falling from her cheeks, she whipped them off. 

“Are you happy?” 

She placed her hand on the stone where my body was buried underneath. Wind blew at her face, fresh air filled her nostrils, the leaves on the tree had shades of green with beautiful flowers that had bloomed on that day. The glowing sun, a crisp circle in the bloody sky, illuminated a quivering path across the field. It bathed the ground and the wispy clouds in a burning red. You are not just some girl I know that now, you are the same girl that made me realize how important it was for me to have you, to love you, It was truly beautiful.

I got to look at her one last time. She had always been a stranger, a person, a girl, but only this time it was different. She was very familiar and I could see everything so clearly and suddenly seeing her at my grave with tears staining her pale cheeks made me realize who I had lost.