06-07-2019, 07:20 PM
When she stands there, face to face, it breaks her heart in two to realize how much his memory had faded. She had been so sure that by thinking of him everyday, and dreaming of him every night, that she had managed to preserve what she had left of him. Just an image, but an image so clear that sometimes it felt real. She hadn’t realized until now, with him so close, that even that had been lost. Frayed at the edges, and the picture worn and tired, and she has to concede that a memory can never serve as a replacement for the real thing.
Her heart is nervously fluttering in her chest, rising up in her throat until she might choke on it, when his eyes finally meet hers. She had fought so hard all those years to make him hers, even if it was just a fraction of him. He was never meant to belong to anyone, but there were moments — some of them fleeting and electric-charged, and others that were slow, lingering, and sweet — that made her think that maybe he was hers. The idea that he might not remember her was unbearable.
He says her name, and it sends a rush down the ridge of her spine, firing along every nerve until she feels almost breathless with it.
“You don’t have to miss me,” her voice is impossibly soft from being alone and never needing to use it, but somehow it still sounds so loud in her ears. This time she steps forward, and she lets the softness of her lips find the familiar groove of his jaw. She breathes him in, and he smells of forests and ice and everything that she has been looking for and everything that she has lost, her soft brown eyes closing as she says in a way that is almost pleading, “I’m right here.”
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.