Poetry: Seek

It's peace I search for
Reason
Hope
Love
But mostly peace... true inner calm
Right now, my soul aches
painfully and alone
An aloneness that I willingly chose.
I want balance
Equilibrium
With that come the rest
Reason
Hope
Love
I have reason most of the time
but need an outlet
Hope... I had it...
I have it...
It comes and goes on swift wings
I lose it all too readily
Love...
Far away it exists...
It's there for the taking
When I find the peace I seek.

Creation

Once you begin a story, you create a whole other world. You create a kingdom, a parallel universe, a city, a world. You create the characters, their personalities, their lives to that point. You create their problems, their hangups. You choose whether to give them the abilities to deal with said problems or not. It is up to the author to dictate the plot.
Or so we think.
you see there are times when an author finds that he has written a character who will not obey.  When pen touches paper suddenly the character seems to have a mind of his own.  He has come to life and will not follow the actions that the author envisioned.  He will not obey.  He has a mind of his own.  The actions you saw so clearly no longer fit.  The character wil not ford the river. He will not battle the dragon. She will not marry the prince.  They will simply not obey.  The actions you would choose for them, no longer seem appropriate.
The world is not as perfect as you had imagined. There are creatures you did not know about. Villains that you did not create, lurk in dark corners...
This is the nature of fiction. This is the nature of writing, of life itself. Nothing is as it seems. The ordinary is extraordinary. If you stop writing mid story, your world will not remain stationary. Your characters will not remain still. No, you have breathed life into them. You cannot make them stop living.
Pen to paper. It is a very powerful spell. Creation.
You must beware what you write. You must take caution, for once you've given words written form, once the story has been given life, it cannot be taken away.  Whether or not you finish, the story will go on. If you leave a story half written, half read, the story will keep living and changing without you. Once pen has been put to paper, the world is real. It exists.
Happy Ever After is not the end.
Your world exists in the realm of blank paper in ink, but it exists just as vividly as your own world, your own reality. Sometimes crossing paths with waking and sleeping dreams. Leave the world alone for too long, ignore your world and characters for too long and you will find that everything has changed.
When you try to begin again, to finish your story, give your characters some kind of ending, you may be too late. In your absence the characters have changed. They have a mind of their own.  The world will fill itself to fullness. YOu will have a hard time finding the right thread. So finish your stories.
But remember, even when done, when you have run out of words and you are happy with your endings, your characters are not done living.
Your ending does not snuff out their existence.
They exist, live beyond Happy ever after.
Their stories do not end with your "the end". No. As soon as the ink has dried, they will continue as if you had never been.  You will be but a distant God who has disappeared from their midsts, who no longer guides and shifts them on their paths.
They will live and die and continue on their journies from where you left them.
Words, inked o paper are powerful. Once upon a time is the beginning of a whole story, of a whole world, not just of the characters you create and control but of the minor figures who you create as simple tols, filling in empty spaces in your world.
Once written they cannot be unwritten and once you have paused  your pen, there is no telling where your characters will go and do, despite your best intentions. You will never know which minor character will suddenly rise and play a starring role. Once the ink is dry, all bets are off.  The story will continue with a mind of its own.
They will go on living and breathing within the blank pages that you didn't think to fill.
And I, I will cronicle them.  I will keep their journals and pages. I who watch the words form from the first to the last will keep their records and hold their stories. I will observe. I will follow even when you've finished.  Even when you think everything is just right, and that there is no more to be told, I am here to watch.
I am at the beginning and ending of each tale, an observer of the changes.
Each once upon a time is the beginning and I watch, I see.  I watch you love, develop and neglect each character in kind.  I see your created world even when you do not.
Each beginning is a gust of wind with the force of your imagination. I feel the wind stregthen and ebb through the telling and then watch once the characters are left to their own devices.  I check on them, root for them, hope that they find the happy endings and good of their worlds.  I hope that they will not be left to the evils lurkings in darkness.
I am not supposed to care.
This is what I do.
I am a watcher, not a storyteller, not a weaver of words.
I see the beginnings and endings. I watch the stories and worlds develop from there.
I celebrate triumphs, I despair with the losses. I despise most villains, but rejoice when they redeem themselves, when they prove that a spark of good does exist.  I cry when the heroes cannot maintain the good in their souls.  I cry when they turn to another way of being.
I am not supposed to.
I am supposed to watch.
But you writers never create perfect worlds.
You create drama and imperfection.  You write sadness and misery, jealousy too.  There is always something hiding, waiting to be exposed by the unsuspecting.  Good cannot always win.  Some worlds will inevitably die and become barren. Others willl thrive.  But time moves them forward, good and bad come in repetitious waves.
I watch and journal it all.
It is what I do.
I grow tired and old.  And I only watch, I do not live these tumoultuos lives.
Whoever wrote my part, did me an injustice. I must watch and wait.  I do not interact.
I am an outsider to all of the stories. I watch.
My own story is mindnumbing. My own story has no progression.  I watch and wait.
I am one of a kind, I think. I sit at the top of the world and watch the worlds of words as they live and change. All the while wishing... hoping.
Centuries ago, when I began, I did not want anything else.  I had no desire, little feeling. I just was.  I just existed as a cronicler.
But now, each story brings me a desire to live, to love, to be... Wants and needs that I did not feel before.
I have watched for a milenia and soon, I think soon, I will be done.  My spirit longs to be free, to be part of something new. I do not know what my author intended.  I do not know if she wanted me to change, to grow. I was born to watch.  I was not born with the desire for adventure.  But now each story has left me wanting... wanting to be part... wanting something more than the solitude of observation. I want to be part... to be one of the characters.
I am almost there.
It is almost...  It is almost time to leave... I will begin a journey of my own writing.  My author, won't she be surprised.  Because we watchers, once we have seen enough stories, once we have observed enough beginnings and endings come and go on the wind, we can choose.
I will leave this quiet place, probably forever.  The previous watcher, she left as well and has yet to come back.  I don't think I will either.  Or maybe I will.  My author has left me alone so I will choose.  Soon I will choose.
For now I will keep watching and waiting for the right moment and the right story.

Waves

The words flow. Images form and ebb like a tide, flowing waves of dark and light. Sometimes the form perfect, just right, other times crashing, images breaking even as they take shape. They leave shards behind, memories of what might have been, where the story could have gone. Only it's not meant to be. That's where it ends. One chance and if you don't grasp at the image, call to the words, pull them to you. They fade, disappear, ebb away like the broken waves, mere shallow memories on the sand.
Words have a mind of their own, when they wish to come and go. They fade before you can capture their essence and other times they ride in all at once, trying to crash, burn themselves into your mind so you can put pen to paper.
I put pen to paper and I write to see what happens. I write to see where the waves will take me at any given point. I write because it's release. It's hope and fear. It's the unknown, the unexpected.  But it's you. The words bubble up from inside you. How in unexpected ways but underlying is a pattern. It's inexplicably you. No matter what, underneath there is you, your perspective foiled in character, plot and intrigue. Your morals, your heart, your story. When you write, it's all there to be seen, to be felt. You look deeper, see more than the surface, see to the core, where currents run strong.

Poetry: Sing

I sing a song
Of life
Of love
Of disappointment
It is how the world turns
It is what moves me
I sing a song
I sing a song
that moves me to tears
that moves me to laughter
that moves me
Just moves me
Always
I sing a song
Of light hearts
Of great difficulty
It is a journey
Ups and downs
Bad and good
It is a life
Simple yet complicated
I sing a song
for me...
If it touches you
so be it
you have touched me...
Moved me
So I sing for you too
It is not easy
this journey
this life
but onward we go
onward we push
to get where we're going
the destination unknown
So I sing
I just sing
I sing a song to life

Villains

Are villains really evil? Are they bad just because they do bad things?  If you think about it, without the villains doing said evil deeds, we often wouldn't have happy endings.  We wouldn't have the motive for change.
As I rewatch The Princess and the Frog I wander if the Voodoo Man was really as bad as he appears. Sure his motivations suck, he's collecting souls, BUT without him we wouldn't really have much of a story, would we? 
We'd have poor Tiana struggling to get her restaurant, Charlotte searching for her prince, and the Prince, well he'd still be a philandering bump on a log.  If the Voodoo man hadn't interfered in their lives, they would have all stayed the same.
The prince would still be a philandering, lazy bum and Tiana would still lack any semblance of fun in her work filled life. Charlotte would continue her romanticizing ways (which she seemingly does anyway) but she probably would have married the prince.
I can picture the scene now: the Prince and Charlotte marry. I don't really see a happily ever after right there. I see the prince spending all of her family money to dance and drink and cheat (he kind of starts out as that type). Charlotte would try to keep him content, and faithful by letting him spend her money. But money doesn't grow on trees. Eventually they would run out. Or eventually his philandering cheating ways would cause her to cut him off...  I could see a divorce in their future, near future.
Picture the money being gone: You are now left with two spoiled children who do not know how to work or do anything remotely constructive. The prince would turn to drinking and disappear into a world where he had it all. He'd gain weight, get mean. The whole she-bang.  Charlotte on the other hand, I feel would get stronger.  She would pull it together somehow, but in that miserable way, when bad things happen and you have to  prove yourself. You prove yourself or you fade into non-existence. You fade into a nonentity. But in proving herself, proving that she is strong and not an airhead, she will lose that charm. She will lose that beautiful innocense that is her spirit.  When life becomes hard we often become harder.
And then there's Tiana.  Without the shadow man, I fear that she'd be lost to her existence of perpetual work . She would always be reaching for that restaurant, for that unreacheable star, unheeding of her mother's words, because there is no one who can turn her eye. She will not let anyone show her the other side of life because she's perpetually reaching for her restaurant. 
The only person who could show her, the other half of her soul, will have married Charlotte. And Tiana will not fall under the spell of a married philanderer. 
Of course, she might.  If we're not in the world of Disney Tiana may just have an affair with the married prince.
But it won't end well.
These things never do.
So is the voodoo man really evil?  Certainly his motivations are. His personality even. But he is the only way we can hit the happy ending.  His actions push our protagonists together, bring them to see other worlds, to see one another. 

For me villains are always interesting. They are bad and good all in one. They have back stories. They are the heroes of their own stories. There is certainly a reason that they are the way they are.
And sometimes an ingeneous author sees the good in the bad and writes the back story. Sometimes they give us a new angle, a different way to see the original tale.  Think Wicked.  The Wicked Witch of the West... she's not actually evil. She has reasons for her actions. She's not evil. Nothing is quite as it seems.
I love stories like that, where the world is turned on its axis, where nothing is what we think it is.

So with villains, I challenge you to think outside of the box.  Are they evil, bad, misguided, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?  What brought these villains to this moment in their lives? This moment where distruction or the grab for power is happening.  How did they get here?  Why?
Is the story really as simple as it seems?

In real life it's often said that abusers were once abused themselves... Is it true for the villains of fiction?
I wonder.
I wonder who will tell their stories, twisted though they may be.  I wonder who will tell their stories, even if we already know of the unhappy endings...

Oneword: Connected

We are all connected… Ironically, even as the thought entered her head, she didn’t believe it. How could she possibly be connected to the stranger standing on the corner waiting for the light? She had never met him… He had never met her. They would never see one another except in that one passing moment… And yet somehow, they were supposed to be connected. So many repeated “We are all connected” but honestly she couldn’t see the string of fate that held them together. The connection may exist but was contrary, fleeting, imaginary….O

Poetry: Lines

Dark lines
thinly intersecting
crossing one over the other
creating shadows along my face
this is what I see
this is who I have become
Lost among the shadows
Lost in the confusion
of intersection
of weaving
of trying to move past it all
only to find myself squarly in the middle of everything
yet again...

Poetry: Panic mode

My heart in my throat
Pounding
Beating steadily
Painfully
Filled with memories
Darkness
Situations past
Trapped
Unsure of past, present, and future...
It happened
But nothing happened
And yet, memories haunt
hurt
Drive me to the brink of tears
Again
Again
I remember
I regret
And my heart pounds
And I stress
And your apology
It means little to nothing
Even though I've said it's okay...
It's not

A girl who reads

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by God, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

— Rosemary Urquico

Short Story: Things fall apart... part III

 Sometimes fault didn’t matter. He knew that because he couldn’t decide who he was madder at: her or himself. He had made it easy for her to back off. He had gone back so often after stupid arguments. He went back even if she should have been the one apologizing. It had never mattered to him whose fault anything was. He only knew that he wanted her, wanted to be with her.

And now, here he was 6 months later moping. He realized he couldn’t mope anymore. He couldn’t keep thinking of her beautiful sad eyes. Even when she smiled there had always been a hint of serious lurking beneath the surface.

He had always wanted to make that sadness go away, to make her smile like there was no tomorrow or yesterday, as if that moment of happiness was enough forever. But he hadn’t been enough. He hadn’t been enough to save her from her haunting. He could only hope that she would be okay.

There was nothing else he could do.

He sighed heavily at the computer screen in his home office. His hand twitched on the mouse. He created a new folder and labeled it “The Past”. He transferred all of the pictures of their time together into the folder. He right clicked and made it hidden.

It still existed. He couldn’t bring himself to delete them, just like he couldn’t bring himself to delete the files in his office. This was the next best things. The files would still exist. Like the past they were still vivid and accessible but no longer on the forefront.

It was time for new memories, a new present and a new future.

He couldn’t keep thinking about what could have been. He couldn’t keep wondering what would happen if he went to her now. He was done. She wouldn’t try to save them. She never had, and he was beginning to accept that she never would. They were done.

She was a part of his formation, important but no longer present. It was something that he would have to learn to live with. It was too late to do anything about it.

It was time to move forward and put the past behind him.

Finally.

***

She sat in the dark eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish food while watching a marathon of sappy movies. The crunch of chocolate and the taste of caramel comforted her as the tears continued to roll down her cheeks. She had tried to go back to compartmentalizing but it wasn’t working.

He was haunting her. She was sure of it. Whenever she left her apartment, she could swear she saw him. She saw the back of his head walking blocks ahead of her, the cowlick apparent in his dark hair. She saw his weathered brown briefcase swinging to his jaunty gait. She saw his big hand hail a taxi. She saw his head tipped to the side holding the cell phone between his head and shoulder while he fiddled in his pocket for a pen. She saw him in everything and in everyone in gestures that her brain wouldn’t let her forget. But it was never him. He wasn’t actually there. She would do a double take, his name on her lips but it was never him. It was always someone else, a similar build, the same hair color.

It’s how she knew she was going crazy.

In the last few days, he was never far from her thoughts and tears were always close to the surface.

And it was frustrating because her thoughts kept running in circles back to him and the feeling that there was nothing she could do. It was a feeling of helplessness that she wasn’t used to. She had ultimately made him leave, let him walk out the door. She could have chased him, talked to him, and explained what had been going on in her head; the stress, the confusion. But instead she had shut herself off and started to clean the glass and water from the floor. She had let her favorite vase fall and break, the blue and white ceramic vase that he had given her on a random Tuesday the year before. She had let it crash and shatter... When he gave it to her it had been filled with her favorite sunflowers and poppies. She remembered looking up when he walked through the door vase in hands. She saw the flowers before she saw him and had jumped from the sofa, knocking her papers to the ground, laughing happily. “They’re gorgeous!” she had yelled and then launched herself into his arms, kissing him. They had been so happy, not always, but often.

And she had let the vase roll out of her grasp and shatter with the slamming of the door. She had let him go.

 She was lost because she had caused her own pain. And in retrospect, she had always caused her own pain. She had always gotten in her own way. She had talked herself out of feeling things, convinced herself that the emotions she felt weren’t real or valid or justified. She had always pulled back and kept her heart safe. Five years into the relationship and she had still been trying to protect herself. Look what protection had gotten her. Look what protection had done.

She still loved him. She still needed him but she had lost him due to her own stubbornness.

That kept repeating in her brain. It was her fault, everything was her fault. And she couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

There was a battle going on inside her. A stupid battle really. It was a battle of thought; whether to take action or to be still. Up until now she had always chosen stillness. She had always chosen to wait things out, to see what happened. She had never actively sought anything out in her life. She had never searched for a boyfriend. They had always chosen her. Her college had basically fallen into her lap, a random whim, something she had fallen into. She had chosen her concentrations; writing and psychology. But she had fallen into her career. It didn’t really relate back to her studies. She had fallen into it by luck, by word of mouth, because every now and then things worked out.

She disliked the life she had fallen into. She had disliked it for months, if not years and she had convinced herself it was okay. It was what grownups do. They fall in line and take responsibility. They find a job, create a life that suites their needs.

The problem was, she had been so unhappy and frustrated that she had lost the one blip of good in her horizon. She had lost the one man who loved her and who she loved because she hadn’t been able to let go of preconceived notions. She had pushed him out when she needed him most, when he had just been trying to help her.

And now, she had to figure out a way to fix it, all of it on her own.

She couldn’t call him broken and in pieces expecting him to step back into her life as if nothing had happened with a glue gun in hand. She realized that he had always wanted to do that, help her pick up the pieces of a puzzle that she hadn’t even realized was incomplete and scattered.

The problem was she had always denied the wrongness. She had pretended that it didn’t matter when she knew it did. At least subconsciously she had always known. The stress had manifested in different ways pushing her away from those she loved.

He had tried to push to keep her. She had let it fall apart.

It was rare for her to feel such resolve, but if she wanted him or anyone for that matter she would have to fix herself first. She couldn’t keep fighting invisible opponents that no one could see but everyone could feel.

And then if fate was on her side, she would find the right opportunity to get him back before he found someone new, if he hadn’t already.

Oneword: Fiction

It was fic­tion. Every­thing that he’d ever said to her was a com­plete work of fic­tion. He had lied from the begin­ning, fab­bri­cated every sin­gle thing he’d ever said to her. From his rea­sons to being at the restau­rant, to his rela­tion­ship sta­tus, to his home­town… Now she couldn’t tell where the truth began, if it was even there at all… Now, she thought, even his feel­ings were a work of fic­tion, a beau­ti­ful piece of fan­tasy elab­o­rately written…

Oneword: Notice

It's what I saw.  The red hair flaming in the water, like a beacon, like the sundry call of a mermaid.  It waved, flashed in the sunlight.  I wanted that hair. I wanted to be noticed like she would be, all because of the Jessica Rabbit hair gleaming in the sunlight, dancing in the water. 


60 seconds, 1 word, GO!!
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Short Story: Things fall apart... part II

At home he let his thoughts wander as he sipped at a beer. There was a soccer match on the TV but he wasn’t focused like he normally would be. No his thoughts went back to her. Her face, those green eyes piercing him. He went back to that first time they had met in the bar that he used to go often, the bar that had been his second home. He hadn’t been there in months because he could remember her too clearly there. That first time he had met her was spring and the world cup had been on; Italy vs. South Korea. He didn’t remember exactly what she had been wearing but it was blue for the Azzuri. She had been laughing watching the screen intently while intermittently answering her friends who weren’t nearly as interested in the game. He mostly watched the game that day.  It had been a good one.  But he had been frequently drawn to her laughter.  He would catch a glimpse of her golden hair swinging through the air as she turned back to her friends. There was something about her that had pulled him towards her. He had known that he wanted to talk to her. He had wanted to know her, wanted to know that vivid smile and crystalline laugh.

But he didn’t want to interrupt. He didn’t want to be the guy that hit on her in a bar.  He didn't want to be remembered that way. So he waited patiently and tried to think of what he could do. He had approached other women successfully in the bar but there was something about her. He didn’t want to send her a drink. He didn’t want to make an overt pass. He wasn’t interested in the one night stand. Not with her anyway.

So when she came up to the bar at the end of the game, right next to him, to get the bartenders attention, he had started chatting about the game. She responded enthusiastically. Not only did she watch soccer, but she knew the terminology. She had played. He didn’t notice but they spoke for over an hour about the game, soccer, and various otherintersecting topics of common interest. It wasn’t until a friend of hers tapped her on the shoulder that either of them noticed that he’d been monopolizing her attention. They had laughed and he noticed the dimple on her left cheek.

He was hooked and she wasn’t remotely aware. She had kept her distance, laughed, smiled, even flirted a little but he couldn’t tell if she was interested or if the animationon her face was solely for the subject matter. So he didn’t ask for her number.

It was her friend that had insured he would see her again. “We’ll probably be seeing you tomorrow Mike. Amy wants to watch the game at 3pm.” So even though he hadn’t planned on watching that particular game he went to the bar hoping to talk to her again. Amy.

Her name seemed to echo in his head needlessly. They had dated for almost 5 years. At first on and off and then steadily. When they fought, he’d always wind up calling her to apologize.

She was always in his head. She was his drug of choice, charming, sweet and fun and then alternatively closed, passive aggressive, and insecure. But within months of starting seeing her he had fallen in love, more deeply than he had thought possible. So although they fought and she occasionally dove him insane, he couldn’t get her out of his head.

And now six months after he’d walked out, called for it all to end, he was still in love with her. She was never far from his thoughts, from his heart. But he couldn’t go back to her. Not after six months. Not after that last fight where everything had blown up in their faces. Because it hadn’t been one argument.  It had been like 100 arguments rolled into one. The prior months had been filled with him asking her “What’s wrong?” and her answering, “Nothing, it’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

And then finally she had lost it, that calm composure had been a façade just like he had thought. And they’d had a shouting match that seemed to go on for hours. It probably had gone on for hours. There’d been screaming and tears and throwing. In the five years he’d known her, it was the most extensive display of emotion he’d seen from her. And part of him had been glad. It was the part of him that prodded the argument that ignored the other part of him that wanted to hold her, calm her, and make everything all better.

But he knew he couldn’t do that. If she went back to holding it all in, he would lose her. They would never be able to be happy.

In the end he had lost her anyway. The argument of hours turned into a silence that was painful to the ears. That had lasted a week and then he had picked another fight; anything to get her talking again. And at the end she had coldly told him to get out and to not come back. There was no hint of the girl he knew.

It was his breaking point. He simply nodded and turned. He went into their bedroom and packed his bags. He had given her what she wanted.

That Thursday he had slammed the door behind him. He heard glass break. He didn’t think she had thrown anything. He had an image in his head of the vase of flowers she had been holding when he had walked past her. He could imagine the vase rolling out of her hands, crashing to the ground.

He had leaned against the door and took a deep breath. He had wanted to go back inside and clean the mess… But he couldn’t. Not then.

Now he took a deep breath and tried to focus on the game in front of him. He wondered if she was watching the same game and sighed. He put his head in his hands, arms propped on his knees.

It was a struggle not to pick up the phone.

This ache had to stop. He would go crazy if it didn’t…

***

Her ache had just begun and because she had only just acknowledged it, it hurt all the more. She wanted to go back to pretending as if he didn’t exist as if he had never existed in her life, had not led this flood of emotion to hit her.

She had always been so controlled. So capable and then he’d come along and changed everything.  She had spent five years resisting. She had spent five years fighting him for freedom; freedom that he had always given her. She had spent five years falling hopelessly and utterly in love with him and hadn’t noticed because he head had been too far up her ass.

She knew when she had first fallen in love with him. She remembered it precisely. It was four months, almost five months into the relationship. She called it the point of no return. It was the point where she usually ran. She never stayed in a relationship longer than five months. She remembered wanting to end it. She had wanted to stop because she was already too attached as far as she was concerned.

He had taken her to dinner on a Wednesday night and then they had wandered around the city hand in hand in the crisp night air. And then when they had passed a playground he had insisted they stop. And he had pushed her on the swings. They had giggled like children running around by the monkey bars and sliding down the metal slide. It had turned into a game of tag and she felt like a child again. He had caught her up in his arms and swung her around and kissed her. She had known it was over. She had fallen in that moonlit moment. She knew that she was in love with him then.

So she spent the next weeks panicking and trying to figure a way out. She had tried to walk away. She had tried to break up with him.

But he hadn’t let her walk away. Every time she tried, he stepped in. He would surprise her; make her fall further in love with him. And yet he never acknowledged her fall. He made it easy. He had made it so easy to love him and only him. He was patient. He waited for her and he always came back to help her work out whatever she had said. He was what she needed. He was what made it all better.

It had taken her forever to realize that. It had taken her six months of make believe, of pretending that everything was getting easier to realize that nothing had gotten better. She wasn’t whole without him. She didn’t know what to do.