Tracing a Sparrow
The morning held still, so still the air dared not breathe. The rain fell, somehow silent, as I watched a tear drip from your lip onto snow-crested ground.
Just another drop of rain.
How is it that you can look so sad when your smile stretches so wide? How is it you say you love me, for now and all eternity, and then reject the ring I have slaved to get you?
How can you walk away after all the time we spent? The years we collected under star-speckled skies? How can you just leave as if I were nothing?
“I’ve a whole life to live,” You said, “Places to see and people to meet. You want to live in a box and keep me there with you. I love you,” Another tear had fallen, “But spending more time with you would just hold me back.”
Damn your smile.
Like a fool, I watched. I watched you walk away, listening to your heels clack until I saw nothing but rain and fog.
Like a fool, I waited for days. Guarding the phone in anticipation, in hope, that you’d call back and apologize.
Like a fool, like a fool, like a fool.
Eventually, I had to move on. I had to walk past the spot where you ended us as if I held no consequence, I had to keep my head held high and learn that all love is not meant to last and any hard feelings between us do not deserve to fester.
I learned, the day we saw each other again, a happenchance meeting, why I was wrong for you.
How much happier you looked, how much more free.
I had learned to live with you, to dream with you. You had learned to do the same, just without me.
Your reckless, carefree attitude never suited me back then. But now, cracking a cocky smile that you returned, I understand.
Dream for the future, sure. Plan for it and enjoy the moments, just don’t get so caught in those moments that you lose sight of it all.
“I love you,” You mouthed from across the way.
“I love you too,” I mouthed right back.
And then we walked away, separate and apart. But not broken.
No, I was not broken anymore. I was going to learn to live, and damn it, I was going to enjoy it too.