When Winter Falls

ii. just last the year

  ❄ For Hanorbi, the one who has been supportive of all my writings❄ 

HIM

So maybe he sprinted all the way to the Starbucks downtown he went to every day in the middle of the night just because he couldn't wait overnight to read her answer. Her. The girl he saw almost every Thursday when he went over for his weekly dose of their signature hot chocolate and a cookie crumble cheesecake. Or did he go there just to see her? He didn't know anymore.

The statue in front of the cafe was something he'd grown with. When he was merely a year old, this burly-looking group of men had plunked the enormous marble statue onto the street. It was a statue of a girl and a boy hugging each other, postures relaxed as if they felt safe and at home, in the middle of laughter. Over the seventeen years of his life, Lance had watched the statue chip off in certain areas, persevere through the climates, and yet the two young adults remained smiling. It was a constant in his life that he had never gotten.

He sighed in reminiscence at the statue, lifting his cold hands to touch the girl only to drop them again. Sometimes, the cafe girl reminded him of the statue. Fall clothes were something they both wore - and rocked, he added with a chuckle. And other times he reminded himself of the boy, always sporting a ruffled hairstyle and an amused glint in his eyes.

He was jarred out of his thoughts when the familiar sound of post-it paper flapping in the wind - one he'd grown used to, what with his habit of using them for everything - reached his ears and, grinning, he snatched it from the statue, walking back home.

I never refuse a deal, especially one with the devil. But, this one needs some opposition. Prove you're a poetry lover and then we'll see, you hopeless romantic.
~ The Starstruck Poet .

Prove my love for poetry? How do I do that?

The post-it he had stuck on his desk, flapped again, as if to mock his confusion. Eyes squinting in thought, he picked up his ballpoint pen and wrote -

My latest favourite poem is 'A Lesson' by Lang Leav. She's a poet that writes for the soul. If that's not enough 'proof' for you, here's something I wrote for someone, because it seemed as if she was homesick for a home that never was -

but the skies have never been more brighter,
the laughter never more merrier;
yet still I yearn for those skies,
for comforting skies so stormy
bearing rain that cleanses,
smell that soothes,
and pitter-patter music;
[while stereotypical good days
stem from sunny ones
and not the calming thunderous]
I yearn for those skies
that take me home;

He stuck the large-sized post-it note onto a picture of the statue he'd taken last winter, when times were tough and he felt cold even in front of the fireplace, and wrote his name.

If she is fall, he thought. He is winter.