Short poem

i. P r o l o g u e

Vol. I

ICE CREAM FIXES A BROKEN HEART. The twenty-five years old Maeve Chemara can never fathom why people believe in such a deluded statement. Certainly, ice cream is simply frozen dairy, mixed with artificial flavoring, and perhaps, tinges of prominent food coloring that swirls within its silkened texture. Sometimes, it tastes like vanilla, other times, it tastes like milk chocolate—but a heart, to the eighteen-year-old girl, tastes like glittering vapor of blossoms, honeysuckle, and seething colors that don't belong. A heart is like roaming thunders, flames, and pulling tides, smelling of seawater that is laced with sparks of iridesce starlight. A heart sure is complicated, and in no way a mere dessert can ever fix a broken one.

The fairytale begins when the wanderlust night effaces the burgundy-colored sky. Hues of divinity. It's ethereal. Around her neck, twinkling diamonds and silvers drape her clavicle. A white satin dress she wears. It's revealing, but not revealing enough for Sebastian's gaze to ever wonder further. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, his eyes carousel the word until it's become havoc against his tongue.

"Maeve," he whispers against her ear. Barely heard.

"Sebastian Park," she replies, "y-you."

Fireworks gleam against his hazel irises like fluttering wings of fireflies. Unanchored. Untouched. Were there really fireworks? Maeve momentarily ponders. He trudges a step closer and so does she, a step and another until their breaths entwine into one bubbling mist of shared rhythm. Truthfully, Maeve doesn't remember how Sebastian had smelled like, what he would taste like, and when he'd grown to feel so... vibrant. Strangely, the long-haired girl doesn't even remember anything, yet still, she remembers all of it. An impossible paradox.

And as his fingertips roam the gold-like skin beneath her jaw, circling and whirling and pressing until she can feel roses of crimson forming against his touch, she can't help but grin. Somehow, the boy reeks of Autumn—of honey-colored leaves that crunch crisply underfoot; of magical explosions hidden beneath decompositions that linger within the air, soothing and salty; of him and her, and their inexplicable memories as they stare into each other's glances. So very restless, sweet, wild, and everything Maeve can ever wish upon the starlight.

"Y-you," Maeve Chemera stutters again. Eyes enlarged. Heart racing. "Y-you!"

Then, as the two stand upon the Golden Gate Bridge, pants muffled by the roaring commotions of rushing cars, Sebastian Park kisses her lips as tenderly as the afternoon sun. Their contact, to her, tastes like strawberry ice cream and all over again Maeve feels as if she's living in a fictional world. A romanticized past. Somehow, she feels... better, even when her heart isn't at all broken—or so she thought. Surely, with him, it will never be.

"You still taste like strawberry ice cream," she mutters against his crazing lips.

"I'd always liked strawberry ice cream," he simply replies, savoring the candied berries, vanilla, and sweetened reminisce shared in between. Gossamer. Love, love, love her heart thumps like a meteor—so very fast, impatient, and seething.

She closes her eyes, letting herself drown in his ever so gentle touches, and suddenly, electrocuting recollections appear against the darkness of her eyelids. Something happened and he was there. He, Sebastian Park, was there. Surely, she must be mistaken. Perhaps, drunken, intoxicated, hallucinating, and in an utter daze. She has to be, she has to—

But she isn't and she pulls away.

"S-Sebastian, I don't want to lose you again." Her voice resounds like a grieved vinyl record.

The rose-cheeked boy simply smiles. "Sweetheart, you never lost me."

"Then how come you're not... you're not—." Maeve can only clutch onto the sleeves of his gray sweater, wishing upon the stars that they would never be parted again. That they would stay together, in each others' grasps, bathing beneath the same starry night sky, wishing upon a shared shooting star, until the end of time, no, until the end of the universe's timeline.

She stares into his pupils, trying to dismantle her heart that she thought would never break. "You're not," she whispers, heart aching and hands frigid, "Sebastian, you're not real."

"Sweetheart, your love is what makes me real, Maeve," he pants, "no single soul in this whole damn earth had ever loved me like how you loved me."

No more, she can see painted fireworks against the midnight sky. No more, she can hear honks and bumps and grumbling engines from the passing cars. And no more, she can feel his faint reverberating thumps lingering within the air that separates the two. Nothing. There is nothing but the unfamiliar warmth cascading down her cheeks, to her trembling lips, and down onto the asphalt. Nothing.

"When you wake, my love, and I'm not there, I promise I am simply not... visible"—his rough thumb caresses her jaw—"Maeve, you'll always have me. Always, because I belong to you and no one else."

"I kn-know it's time for you to leave"—she wraps her arm around his hip bones, hard and unforgiving—"but promise me you'll come back. Promise me."

Sebastian Park lowers his body and drags his arm against her shuddering back. For a moment, he envelops her like how the moon will forever embrace the sun, how summer and winter collide, and how stardust falls onto her fluttering eyelashes. So very lovable and gentle and soft. Their raging pulses converge as she drowses herself to sleep, lullabied by his fragile breath that licks her eardrums.

She wakes up. Not in the bridge, but seated on her solemn apartment floor with a box of the blurred abstract palette at front—the TV. An empty bucket of strawberry ice cream is wedged between her crossed-legged lap and she quietly wonders, How odd it is that a mere strawberry ice cream can make me feel so homey and... alive? And everything Maeve Chemara thought impossible.

Yet still, she's never come to accept any of it. Nothing.

"If only I could just go back in time and fix everything." 

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Words: 1005