The Diary Of A Wistful Girl

August 27, 2024

Dear Diary,

I stand alone in the woods watching the sun cut through gaps in the trees. Gold streaks chase away the shade, illuminating and warm. It would be silent if it weren't for the chittering birds and the screaming cicadas.

I imagine myself here, amongst the frilly ferns that tickle and the gnarled roots that jut.

And you are at my back. Your breath is feather light on my neck.

I imagine your fingers tracing over my shoulder, your barely-there touch drawing goosebumps down my arm in spite of the heat.

Turning around is reckless. You are reckless.

With your words and your feelings and our hearts. Hers, too.

But I can't bear to pull myself away.

No, I do not know you. Not really. And still my soul has never reached so unquestionably toward anyone like this before. What little potions did you drip over the cuts in my skin to make me want you and abandon sense? What world did you float down from to meet me - me - in this grove?

I do not love you. I cannot love anyone anymore.

But still.

The twisting in my stomach is a combination of guilty and giddy, because I imagine your palm - it glides from my ribs to my hip. It tightens.

You remind me of a god.

Touching things you shouldn't be touching, taking things you shouldn't be taking, never reaping the consequences.

And...

I let him. I let him. I let him.

It was too good not to. He felt too good not to.

But then he's gone again and I'm reminded it wasn't my imagination.

My skin is cold in every place we touched and the excitement has died, replaced with a hollowness he was sent to fill only temporarily. The sun has dropped behind the trees and the grove has sunken into inky darkness. The birds sleep and the only sound left is the scream of the cicadas.

They are no match for the echoing scream in my soul.

While I wait for his return.