Poems, Imagines, and Quotes

Coming of Age

They were close, so close they couldn't be separated in the heat of the moment. They grew up together, grew up learning how to conform to one another and be what the other needed. They loved one another and shared a special bond that would soon be severed by force.

All their lives they had been taught that the mission was a special thing to happen to people and that it didn't just happen to anyone. The officials were right in saying that, they were right about most everything. Everything except the special part, that was just a lure for no insight on something much more than that. The mission was what would drive them apart, permanently seemingly.

The mission on the outside was advertised as the best thing to happen to one's country, where the men of a certain age would be taken great care of in turn for their service and loyalty to their people and country. What it was on the inside was totally misconstrued and they soon found out.

He was ripped from her grasp by a certain government contract and he was thrusted into a world where he was not equipped to live. He did his best, training hard and following orders all day everyday while she was left in their own little world that was now only hers. She prayed for him every day and his letters always brought her to tears but still, he fought on.

In the heat of so many victims of the mission including his, he grew up and became a hard individual. No longer did he flinch at the sight of blood of cringe at the sound of a bullet penetrating skin as he used to when he was a kid. Now, he was a man and he was unpenetrateable. He was not the boy she knew.

She had remained the same, loving her life in solitude and pining for him. She didn't know the mission was as much of a lie as it was she realized when she noticed how his letters slowly changed with him. She was still a girl but he was no longer a boy. All she wanted was him again, she knew she could break the shell that the mission had created around him, but when she would be able to do that she did not know.

Years later and a heart that was now stone, the man returned to the girl and she realized the boy had died inside. No longer there a boy stood in front of her and no matter how much and hard she tried, she couldn't bring out the boy in the man again.

He looked into her eyes and he knew she was alive. She was the girl of his dreams and he didn't want her to die. He'd been dead for so many months and she'd been waiting, loving what wasn't a part of him any longer and he still loved her with his being. She still loved him too but the mission had its part and she didn't need to live with the mission. He didn't want it to taint her beautiful skin or harden her beating heart. As they both grew, he'd grown too much and he left, he left with her heart he didn't realize. She could not live without a heart.