Tape it to the top of her desk.
Wrap it around her water bottle at lunchtime, when her back is turned.
You always scribble a heart on the peak of the envelope, forcing the heart to split in half once she opens it. Lets her break the crease on your ever-quiet heart, lets her hear the words you're too petrified and too mystified to speak aloud.
She always smiles when she sees an envelope. Her lips part ever-so-slightly, and there's this split second of indrawn-hissing-breath, wide-brown-eyes-sweet-shock. She always looks the tiniest bit confused, as if there's been some sort of mistake and it can't possibly be for her.
But they always are.
She's the only thing that has ever prompted you to press pen to paper, and her radiance is the only motivation you have to trace maps and memories onto pages, bleeding out a portrait of her to show herself, in hopes that she'll see how lovely she is to you.
You don't think she believes the portrait, yet.
So you keep drawing her in your words. In her loveliness and her imperfect-perfection and in the way the room presses lighter when she walks in, how the sun perks up from it's spot in the sky and the air tastes more like honey-sweet-summer rather than stagnant-air-conditioning-college.
You wrote a letter once, trying to explain the effect she has.
You never bring yourself to send it.
It's been years since then, however. Years since that first day staring up at the ominous figure of your new school, years since you saw her laughing and skipping up the steps, careless of the looming building above her.
Years since you fell in love.
Yet still, you write her- though nowadays, you cannot send them. You stay up till the early gray-dawn hours, jotting word after word down until there's a permanent ink-blotch on your thumb and index finger. You write and write and write, too propelled by the terror of losing her to do anything else.
Weeks pass. By some freak mistake, or perhaps some miracle, you get an invitation to the ceremony. There's a gold embossed seal on the peak of the envelope, and you're torn between laughing and sobbing.
You don't really want to go, but you don't think you've much of a choice. You don your best clothes, the ones you only ever wore once, on your mother's fancy birthday dinner, and get into the car.
You're not sure how you make it to the event without skidding off the road.
But you know that this is your last chance to see her, your last chance to say goodbye. She's wearing white, of course, a surprisingly short gown that falls just past her knees. In her clasped hands there rests a bouquet of white roses and lillies-of-the-valley.
After all, they're her favorite flower.
You wait in line as her family and friends shuffle forward, giving their thanks and well-wishes. The thrumming sensation that's been under your skin ever since the announcement reaches it's peak, making you feel as if hundreds of bugs are crawling over you.
She's wearing golden eyeshadow. It sparkles in the midday sun.
You stare at her for a long time, but she just keeps smiling at you. You wish she'd make that face again. You wish her lips would part and her eyes would light up and you wish she would positively beam at your stupid little letter.
But she isn't beaming today.
You slide the letter, your final letter, in between the delicate white flowers. Give her one long, last look- but it's pointless.
This is not the girl you fell in love with. This is her plastic replica.
When you turn away from the casket, hot tears welling in your eyes, you can barely refrain from sprinting down the aisle and back to your car.
The love of your life is buried with her eyelids closed, her hands clasped around her favorite flowers, and a folded piece of note-book paper pressed against her chest.
No one notices the broken-heart seal on the peak of the envelope.
No one notices that when your love is buried, your heart is buried with her.
No comments:
Post a Comment