Thousand Paper Cuts

Thirty-three : never let go

Mark :

(A week later)

He stood up and started walking into the woods. He remembered this poem of Robert Frost their literature teacher couldn't stop talking about :

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep

And so, with her book in his sweaty hand, and amid tall dark forest trees that touched the sky, he thought about his promises. Of never leaving her. How much she had believed in him, and how much she would be sad right now just like him.
Not the kind of sad people feel mostly : the one that heals by the next morning often. They both were sad like as if it was their part, and it'd take lifetime to heal.

"You know", Lucas used to say, "everybody lacks patience. We want what we want right now. We are going nowhere fast."
Sometimes while looking up at the sun that burned everyday, Lucas also used to say,
"If we slow down in our life atleast once in a while, we'll come to know about the beauty we're missing amid everyday rush."
So he stood still on the rotten ground, and realised how quite the woods were despite of being full of life, and for a moment he thought maybe all the stories are in our head. Maybe we aren't that irreparably damaged.

Tears sprung out from his eyes, as he rushed back to the wooden house. While keeping her face in mind (bright, freckled and full of smile), he started taking out the necessary things with him. He took her book with him, Lucas's letter and the pictures they had on the wall.
Before he could leave, he wrote something on the wall :

I was here
---Mark Bryant, 1998

When he got outside, and placed everything in his car, his eyes fell on the pink wine on his backseat. He remembered how Lucas used to love it, and always kept a fake ID to buy them outside his town. So, he took the cold bottle in his warm hand, dug the ground just near the house, and buried it inside.
"For you", he whispered, looking up at the sky, "You can have it all. I won't mind..."
He looked up at the sky once more, and even though he did not believe in dead people conversating with the living in Morse code or whatever, he did believe in that "something" that happens to all of us up there when we die. And that "something" made him convict that Lucas, even though no longer here, was in a much better place up there.

He started his car slowly, and drove away. It felt like years he hadn't driven his car, even though it had just been a month. The longest month of his life.
So he drove away, far far away, from that forest and wooden house full of past memories. And drove farther, to make present memories with her, longing to get refilled. He kept telling himself,
"She still loves you, nobody else. I bet she'll be waiting for you with her beautiful half-smiles and tender eyes."
Atleast that was what he hoped. Because he realized that maybe it was just a misunderstanding afterall, even though it took him so many days to realize (dumbhead). Maybe, no Definitely, it was all because of her novel, which never got her fame.

It didn't matter. Because her book had changed him a little. He would not say completely, because the pain was still there, but atleast enough to make a step in hopes of reaching her and fixing her heart.
Because he was so much worried about her. Every night in that wooden house, he would wonder whether she'd eaten anything or slept enough.
So he drove and drove, in high hopes to win her back, because she'd changed him, and he had atleast tried to hope and believe.

Little did he know that he started to believe in hope from a girl who had already lost.

Skye :