Fallen

PREFACE

I remember that day.
You sat four seats away from mine.
It was a day of restless movements, the glancing up, and down and around, feelings of impatience, anxiety, and anticipation.
When your name was called I glanced at you once with a spark of recognition from a previous life, had known you as a different person. I was changed. So were you. Your hair combed so neatly, not a strand out of place, collared shirt, straight face. But no smile.

Your gaze had met mine for a split second.
The only thing that remained the same were your eyes.

Those eyes, deep brown with specks of hazel and gold. Memories flooded back to me, so rapidly that I had been taken aback. The impact of meeting with familiarity had opened up parts of me that they had promised would remain shut for eternity.

"The most painful love there is, the love left unshown
A love that cannot be expressed, affection left unknown
The love that withholds touching, afraid of what it would say
And the most painful thing about unexpressed love is--"

I looked away, shutting my eyes. It wasn't happening, it wasn't supposed to. It wouldn't.

Slowly, the memory sunk down, faded into the abyss of forgotten past, but I could not shake off that feeling of wrongness, of impropriety, of disbelief.

Since then I had been treaded around you cautiously, never coming too close, and never looking into your eyes.

"--the most painful thing about unexpressed love
is that it never fades away..."