Bitter Night--Edana

She had gotten news of his return and people asking if she wanted to go visit him, she received questions from her best friends if she shivers in panic when she crosses the same bridge he left her on, but she doesn’t because every time she goes there, she yearns to return; to sink beneath the water and see for herself what was it so desperate and compelling about the waves that made him believe he could throw her love away there. She would never reach out to him; she would rather get an extra hour of sleep every night than stay up looking at his old pictures that she still had of them both. After all, he probably has forgotten all about her, all about their childhood together turned innocent romance or maybe he never cared enough to recall. But it was all a long time ago anyway, he’d become somebody who he never was when she knew him, someone who she’d never associate herself with ever again. The way she so easily was able to hide her feelings for him was always a mystery; maybe because she never stuttered in front of him when he took his seat next to her, never turned away from shyness when they locked eyes however each time, she’d hear his voice and time would stop itself for her, and suddenly she saw flowers in a field of dirt. 

He was no different, if only he could have realized it sooner or at least before his forever started falling down leaving him in his own wonder if she would want him now; but how could he know that one day he’d wake up feeling more only for it to be too late. She burdened him with the guilt of not returning her feelings, and slowly backed away from her life after being there for years. There was nothing else that she could do but love him more and pretend she didn’t notice until she did. He took the road up to her house only to catch her traveling the other way, stopping to see her with a faint smile hiding the dark cloudy storm above her head. He tried to speak, but something beneath the ground grabbed his feet telling him to keep only a gaze on her because he was afraid that her walls would be painted grey again from the thought of that night. He knew there was not a storm he could ever survive without her, she was his best friend after all and with a river running through his mind, he made the move he knew he shouldn’t have dared to, but he also knew there wasn’t a river he could cross without her hand in his so with that he reached for her. “Let go.” She continued her journey, but he didn’t have the courage to hold her back. And when he found himself stranded on the very same road he had taken to reach her, he wished he’d waited a day longer, because that’d be better than knowing he would never see her again.