it was windy out

It was windy out, dead in the night. She was sitting on the wall, waiting, wondering when he would return to her. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there. Hours. Felt like days. Maybe it was days. She had seen him only once, but that’s all she needed. His deep soulful eyes, brimming with curiosity, intense so much so that it made her shiver, devouring her whole even now when he was long gone. Believe in something, he had told her. Believe in my words, in my heart, in me. And so she had and now she was left with a broken heart, empty room, empty hands.

What a world we live in, she mused to herself, remembering all the things that have happened to her in the past years, not able to imagine what her life would have been like without those memories. She looked at her hands, small and slightly tanned from being outside all day. It was just the beginning of summer, just beginning to change seasons again, even though the weather around her only changed once a year. She missed him so much it hurt even to think about it, to even remember it, even though she knew she never wanted to forget. Love of her life, as short as it had been so far.

She hopped off the wall, landing sharply, her toes tingling from the sensation, hurting slightly. The wind blew harshly against her face, burning her cheeks red. She dug her hands into her pockets, moving quickly back towards home. No lights came from her windows, no lights except the slight flickering of a candle, far from the glass. She saw a shadow move inside the home, startling her still.

Her mind raced as she took off, running, tripping, falling onto the cold concrete, scraping her palms raw as she kept herself upright. She bounded up the steps, two at a time, not hoping only trying to make it true. She opened her front door, out of breathe, hands on her knees, inhaling roughly, and looking up. Her eyes took their time adjusting to the dim lights, trying to take in the movements. He stood, leaning against her countertop in her kitchen. She couldn’t see his face, but the candle illuminated his silhouette, the length of his arms, the rounding of his shoulders.

You came back, she whispered, edgy and nervous.

He walked slowly over to her, putting his hands behind her head, running his fingers through her hair, as she buried her face into his palm.

I never left, he mumbled back, kissing her.

_

he would be crushed

He would be crushed. Because she lied. Because she moved faster. Because it’s another reminder of why he’s different, not worth the effort.

But these are dark paths that have no real meaning except the understanding that he is voluntarily causing his own heart break.

Why can’t he be angry at her, he wonders. Why he can’t resent her for the decisions she made, those that were not in anyone’s best interests, he remembers.

She was gone so quickly. Life changed so quickly. And he understands, and knew then that it would be a struggle, the effort. And while he can do it, sometimes he just doesn’t. And sometimes he does. But even now he knows that it wasn’t enough. They needed more, because they were more. He was unique, and so was she. So the solution cannot be, could not be the same, it has to be unique as well.

She is lonely, he can hear it. Depressed and disappointed in the changes she’s made. And yes this violent monster erupts when he thinks about her moving on because she should be moving towards him, back with him. Is this him holding on to her? Because he knows she doesn’t think, feel like this.

But he still wants to know what she thinks about. Is it him? Is it how she ages, her own age? Her mistakes? A fear, that in trying so hard to be risk free of the world, the biggest risk involved no reasoning? She was right in that it was, is difficult. But he thinks it’s more so for her, and in his heart, he knows she needs him to be there, pulling him through it. So it remains an open wound, because they are not near each other enough to close it.

So unless one of them makes a move, it will never be closed.

…

the road curved

The road curved, it wound, it curled around the mountain, overgrowth hanging into the street. It was a road not well traveled, alone and dark most of the time. Two lanes of highway, sometimes not even large enough for bypassing cars. No middle marker dividing the lane, nothing to distinguish one side from another. The sky was darkened, clouds hanging low over the road, pushing up against the mountains, soaking the flora with soft droplets of water.

 A lone wolf walked the concrete ground, the pads on the bottoms of his paws barely making a sound. She stops in the middle of the road, looking to each side, listening closely to the sounds of the surrounding forest. She’d been alone for a few days now, having strayed from her pack, leaving them. There were bite marks, scratch marks that trailed up the sides of her legs, open wounds the still bled freely, lightly, but freely. She was panting from running, the weight of her heavy winter coat slowing her down. She was so tired.

She shook her shaggy head, grays and whites shaking in the low clouds, her yellow eyes staring out into the distance before her. She looked behind her, in front of her, behind her again. And then she heard the howl, reverberating off the branches, the soil, the ground, the clouds. It was all around her. She took off running, her legs and her paws burning with pain, on fire as the blood seeped in between her toes, leaving scarlet paw prints in her wake. The howl came again, causing her to run faster down the increasingly dark path, not taking in where she was going, what direction she was going in.

She was afraid of that howl. She knew where it came from, who was making it. Her mind was racing so fast that she almost stumbled over a rock in the road, not having noticed it. She tried to keep from falling onto the cold concrete, but her paws gave way to the slipperiness of the path, and she fell. The momentum of the running caused her to roll furiously across the road. When she came to a stop, she just laid there, panting, hurting, angry. She tried to move, but her muscles screamed at her not to. She put her head back down onto the road, focusing on the light pitter patter as it came down on her snout, her eyelids.

Suddenly, the drops from the clouds ceased. She opened one eye, and her heart stopped. The sound of the howl had found her, in the shape a large brownish white wolf, teeth bared. He was so large, that at first, she thought he might have been a bear. But he was a different kind of enemy. His head loomed over her, blocking rain and fading sunlight alike. He looked down at her, lowering his snout to hers. He licked her cheek a couple of times, causing her to whimper. She tried to lift her own head, to move away from him, slowly putting weight on her exhausted feet. She trembled while he sat hunched back on his hinds, waiting, calculating, evaluating.

She tried to run from him, she tried to get away. But he caught up to her easily, alongside her damp winter coat, nudging her with his snout, bruised and bloody, like her legs. She growled, hackles raising, warning him to stay away from her, trying to turn into another direction. Wind swept up them both, blowing through their fur, rustling the leaves on the branches, leaves falling and flying within its grasp.

Clouds wisped around them, covering them, shielding them, though try as she might, every time she turned away, hiding behind the increasingly thick fog, he was constantly in front of her, facing her, wouldn’t let her turn away from him. He rubbed his head against the side of her neck, causing her to react defensively, snapping her jaws in his direction, almost catching his muzzle in her sharp teeth. He looked at her, eyes so dark brown, they appeared black. She growled ferociously, cautioning his actions, making sure he knew he shouldn’t get any closer.  

He moved to her side again, and just stood next to her, not touching her, not making any efforts to. She kept growling, snapping at him, breaking skin on his foreleg. He snapped back, startling her out of her focus. He shuttered as the pain swept through him again, releasing a small howl. His ears lay flat on against his head, the wound bleeding furiously, puddles of red pooling around his toes, her toes alike. He dipped on his knees, splashes coming out from the sides, wetting her fur. But he would not leave her, he would not attack her.

She looked at him, her anger dissipating, upset with herself for causing him pain. She moved closer to him, putting her muzzle under his own, understanding.     

a letter from me to them

He expected her to change, he expected her to adapt to him. Which she had done. The changes he had gone through in the past have been enormous. And positive on the whole. He had survived, which is the best and only thing he could have done, and he did it. The problem comes from the fact that while she had been accepting all this in the face, standing up against it all, he had done nothing, made no attempt. There is a difference between what is being asked of him, and what he makes an effort to do. There is a difference between a mother buying flowers for her daughter because she knows her daughter is upset, and him buying flowers for her because he knows he did something wrong. Effort.

Something broke when he separated; there is no doubt about that. But things that are broken are and can be fixed. But what he may not realize, and probably doesn’t, is that when something breaks, it’s never identically repaired again. It’s never the same. What he has failed to realize is that it broke for a reason. A weak bridge cannot sustain its weight, so it folds, implodes, on itself. But the bridge isn’t rebuilt the same way, it’s reinforced, it’s made better. That’s how it works.

             And so he failed to realize this. He still fails to realize this. He broke something very strong. And it took a lot for him to do this. And she let it happen. She’s done fighting with people about whether or not it’s something that needed to be done. Though, she's still a proponent about living in the now, what is now versus what could happen. Things change, people change, every day. He thought that her friendship with him can return to what it was. No. That will never happen, because she doesn’t want that type of relationship anymore. Because there was something inherently wrong with it to begin with. That is why things break, and he needs to understand that it does not matter that he broke something, only that it did. He cannot keep acting the same way towards her and still get the same results. More importantly, and to take most of the heat, he changed her. Which means also that he cannot act and react towards her the same way he had in past and expect the same results for the present and the future. That’s how things grow: they change, they adapt, they evolve, and they are never the same again.
          What she needs for him to do is understand that every situation is different, every argument feels and looks different. That she reacts a different way every single time, so no matter how much he thinks he has a hold on something, her. It becomes a power thing, a control thing, between him and her. And letting go of that power is where she, herself, has faltered, because it’s like a fortune teller, it's like destiny. She knows what will happen and the only thing she can do is watch. What she tries to do is alter how the situation plays in real time. And perhaps that is something that she should stop doing. The less she tries to control, the more she ends up actually controlling. She has been burned. But only because she has done her own burning done first.

the spider glided over her web

The spider glided over her web, her toes gracefully moving over the lines of silk that were stretching from the branches. The sun was shining on her back, dewy and drowsy from the morning wake. She was looking over her territory, wondering if anything had come in during the night. She hadn’t felt anything, but it never helped to check what might have crept in.

She looked over the moths that had already been caught, some more than others. Some wiggled against their death cocoons, others just lay still, knowing that to struggle wouldn’t make a difference. She watched, maybe a bit sad for the ones who had given over their lives to her, for her insatiable appetite.

The winds blew against her web, the dew drops raining down to the forest floor. She hid back under a leaf when she spotted a butterfly fly closely to her home. Her many eyes could only barely capture the color that radiated from the butterfly’s wings, blues and greens and grays. Her heart soared as the butterfly landed on the very edge of her silken strands, edging closer for a view of her next capture.

The butterfly’s wings were folded against one another. It looked ready to take flight, but not quite. The spider watched as the butterfly surveyed the web, the inert bodies tightly wrapped in silken strands. He inched closer to the bodies, soundless and slow. The spider crept further up her web, hidden by the leaves of the branches, poised to take aim. Such a pretty prey, she thought to herself, what a fine trophy he would make on her web, how he would attract so much more for her to feed on.

She crept alongside the butterfly, who seems in a gaze, staring at the unmoving bodies still. The sun suddenly shined down on the web, revealing her black body hidden within the branches. She felt that this was now or never, otherwise she would be spotted. She scurried across the strands, but somewhat resisting the feeling that she should strike. Light struck her many eyes, and she halted, blinded.

The butterfly felt the warmth of the rays and opened his wings. Light penetrated through the thin membrane of his wings, rainbowed colors flowing through, illuminating the silk strands of the web, reds, yellows, oranges. The spider stopped, stunned by all its colors. If she could have, she would have cried out in alarm, so many things happening at once. The butterfly, noticing the quake of the web, fluttered his wings, gathering all the sunlight he could, turning slowly towards what could have been his end.

But the spider remained where she was, staggering through colors and light. The butterfly was so beautiful, she felt, so remarkable that she just stared. Her many eyes met the butterfly’s, a sort of loss overcoming her. What a great capture this would have been, but she felt it might have been a crime to render this creature lifeless. She could not take his life, she knew that. She could not take him for herself, denying his existence to others. He was too full of essence, too full of spirit.

As he folded his wings, the spider felt something die inside, like she was being denied a look into another creature’s soul. She lowered her body to her web, bowing low to the butterfly, easing into a humble obedience. She would give herself to this creature, his beauty too great for even her to withstand.