I drew back heavy black drapes, temporarily blinded by the light flooding into my room. Slowly peeling my eyelids open, I watched in silence the brown pigeon that had rest on a tree branch close to my window. It puffed itself up, it's feathers parting at it's neck as it hummed a tune I could not hear. The world outside was silent; soundproof glass padded my windows. I pressed my palm against the glass and gently tapped my nail against it. The pigeon stopped in it's tune, sharply turning towards me. It made sharp turns with it's head, settling for a displeased one-eyed stare at me, it's head turned sideways. I whistled lowly, three sweet notes. It could not have heard me, but it turned it's head sideways again, alternating it's unflinching glare. I breathed out as I shut the drapes, plunging my room into darkness once more.
I clapped twice and lights came. The room smelt of lavender. The freshly plucked flowers hung on the posters of my bed. The scent created a sort of calming aura in the room and filled every crevice; from my walk-in closet to my bathroom fitted with all the features money could buy.
Money, money, money. That was all I ever heard. My mother got remarried to a billionaire, changing our lives completely. It was positively mortifying.
For me, of course. I dared not complain, lest I be considered ungrateful. I mean, who needed the attention of a mother and not thirty maids on ones' graduation day? Or the support of a mother during a first driving test? And of course, not the advice of a mother concerning her daughters first proper relationship!
I was bitter. She had forgotten her responsibilities as a mother.... A mother, not someone who delegated her duties to strangers and expected them to fill the void she had left.
Suddenly filled with a surge of power I marched towards my bathroom. I scrubbed myself raw, and felt jets of hot water course down my body. I beheld my face in the many mirrors of my bathroom, a face countless times called beautiful. Beautiful? A beautiful face wasn't to be laced with tears like mine. It was meant to be considered beautiful by the one it's heart longed for. Forever, and not a day shorter. Quickly, I wiped the tears I didn't know had come, away from my face.
With his handsome, dark complexion and beautiful baritone, I considered him perfect. Our love was peculiar; it started on Valentine's day and would have it's end on the same, many years after. He smelt like fresh rain and whiffs of a scent I cannot place, but will recognize even in another life.
All good must come to an end and likewise did his patience for me. For my slow care and gentle love, hesitant smiles and shy kisses. Something was eating him up from the inside, literally, but of course, I was the last to know. The very last.
My thoughts led me to my window again and I drew back the drapes to watch a new scene unfold; the bird was joined by another, and together they sang tunes I could once more not hear. I could have been like the bird, taught to fly by it's mother. We are not all lucky.
I was happy for her; too swept up in her world of luxuries to notice her negligence, her deep faults and grave mistakes. She was drunk on the essence that made a renowned doctor such as herself ignorant to the simplest of signs and symptoms of her patients...or those around her. She was not to be blamed.
I picked out a dress. African hair was difficult to care for sometimes, so I held mine back with a thick, elastic band. Make-up was irrelevant on that day, especially since he wouldn't see my face, but I would see his.
The soft material brushed at my ankles, it's hem lined with white lace. It had long sleeves, a beautiful grey dress that came in tightly at the waist with a delicate neckline. Grey was his favourite colour. We had picked out the dress together a few months back for the next Valentine's day, which was that day. Our combined distaste for cliché things led us to pick colors not considered traditional. He was to wear the same color as well.
I slipped my shoes on, grey flats with silver details. By my bedside lay a ring, gold with an emerald stone in the middle, hewn to a perfect circle. It had dots of black and grey within the gem. He had given it to me before fate decided he deserved more, in the form of perfect visions of creation, with wings white and blinding as the sun. Before he decided to leave me with absolutely no warning.
He kept his word. "Forever", he whispered that night he gave me the ring, his beautiful grey eyes staring deep into me as he slipped it onto my cold fingers, his warmth radiating even in the cold of a December night. Forever is what he gave me; forever without him.
I hate Valentine's day, not because I hate the light of love or even because He broke up with me on that day, because that's the thing - he didn't. I would have preferred that any day, any lifetime, to what he did to me instead.
I slipped the ring onto my finger, and felt it cool against my skin. Two claps and the lights went out, as I slowly walked towards the door heading to the grounds where I would say my goodbye, to the one who had stolen more than my heart, but my living essence as well. To the boy who even with his eyes shut and face pale, looked every bit the one I fell and utterly shattered for. To the man in the grey suit, with a black rose placed between his palms as he lay in the glass box atop the podium, surrounded in a semicircle by friends, enemies, family and people who organised his funeral to quell their guilty consciences.
On the fourteenth of February my heart was buried along with the only man I will ever truly love. His death was a shock to only me; he had pleaded with the people in our lives to keep word of his disease away from me, to hide the bitter truth from my gentle heart. My mother's lips never uttered an apology, despite allowing him to die at the hands of incompetent doctors when she could have stepped in and used some of her unending wealth to save his life. With wine, she drowned out her guilt.
THE END.
