Posted by Sophie Westrope on August 28, 2014 · Leave a Comment
“I love you,” he said. And her mind wandered back to the first time he’d uttered those three words. How it felt as though no other words existed in the English language in that moment. Just those three wonderfully simple syllables of loveliness. Like all of the pages of the Oxford Dictionary suddenly became blank with all verbs and nouns and the only inked letters left formed a perfect declaration of adoration.
She nodded slowly, avoided meeting his eye and told him “I know, darling.” But those eight letters could have been any others and formed any number of words because she no longer listened to his pleas. She no longer felt their effects. They felt hollow and bare now.
She gazed longingly out of the window, watching the rain as it rolled down the glass as he continued to talk in his low monotone asking if she’d felt this way for a while. Her heart ached, longing for an intermission.
“Please just tell me what we can do to fix this.” he pleaded. Desperate now, his hazel eyes brimming with salty tears as he chewed the skin around his fingernails with great urgency, as if on a mission to gnaw right through to the bone.
“We can’t. We just can’t.
It’s over.”
And just like that, everything changed. In a split second every worry and fear evaporated and her mind began to slowly but carefully repair the damage the last two years had made on her soul. But she knew, deep down in the very darkest pit of her stomach, that while she felt numb now, only later would she truly experience this great loss.
Goodbye to love, old friend. T’was nice knowing you in your fleeting visit.