I promised I’d wait for you as you went away and I was forced to live without you. The days that were supposed to be yours are just days lost in time and I am slowly becoming someone else’s bride. You are crawling into history but everyday, I feel your presence, and it makes you feel every bit more real. I look up and expect to see you but I only see the mailman. I open a book and hear your voice when I read. I still hear you whispering in my ear when I go to bed. You are whispering, “I love you…and you love me too.”
There is a form in my bed that is not you, which is the most painful thing to see because I still love you. I don’t know why he is still here it may be because he’s persistent. He tries to love me the way you used to but I only feel you. When he gathers me up in his arms; it reminds me of you, and I see you. I can feel you. His arms are your arms, his breath is your breath, and this moment is our moment. Yet it is a moment of the past, haunting me like your ghost. So I turn away into a blackness of grief and he into a state of restlessness and it’s become a habit of ours every night.
I still have the picture you gave me. I didn’t want to remember you with such a blank face. Your shaved brown locks and your sad blue eyes stare at me like an emotionless robot. There had been a time where I vividly remember those blue eyes sparkling with joy and you hair whipping in the wind. You had acted like such a child then. After you joined the army, they made you a man, taking the joy away from the child.
“I’m proud to wear this uniform,” you lied. You didn’t want to wear that uniform but they made you. You stopped resisting your fate when reality hit you – I was no longer yours.
The day you handed me that picture was the day Mother forbade me never to see you again. She didn't wait a second before promising a wealthy young man my hand. So we met at our heart carved tree out in the fields. It was the first day of summer when you whispered the words, “Forgive me.” I did without any questions and I loved you even though you were leaving. I loved you though you are gone, and I am empty. I had to walk down the aisle and marry another man. It was my worst nightmare playing before my eyes; you weren’t there to stop me. I said, “I do” and you could not object. Even though I closed my eyes and I saw your face instead of his. I said my vows, because you were gone.
Then it seemed as if I was dreaming you burst though the doors and I looked at you as if you were a ghost. But there you were, very real and the center of attention. The minister had to repeat his line, clearing his throat several times; “You may kiss the bride!”
I pursed my lips to kiss my new husband. What else was I supposed to do? Turn my back on my family, ditch a man that loved me just as equally as you? I would have been disowned, banished from my home, and never to return from the comfortable hometown that I could never leave otherwise. I am not denying I wanted to because I dearly did! All these years I’ve been stuck in a place with inherited money but nothing to spend it on. There was no place to go in this dead end town but I couldn’t bear to leave it. You had been my sole reason for staying but you left without me and this was how I punished you.
Then again…
Then again, it’s not like it was the last time I saw you since the wedding. I met you at our same tree and it was almost like the old days. We embraced and kissed like we were the only ones on Earth. When it was getting dark, we went our separate ways. Once in a while I’d come back with groceries or dinner to make it look like I was running around doing chores like the stupid housewife I was. You knew I resented it so you convinced me to continue our forbidden affair.
You would lay beside me in bed and whisper in my ear, “I love you…and you love me too.”