Endlessly

Preface

It was unhealthy to love someone this way- so recklessly, so impulsively. But loving her was not a choice. She was an unforeseen bullet to the heart, the impact devastating as it coursed through my veins like venom. The process destroyed me. Could she see the staggering effect her presence had on my health? The way my pulse jackhammered erratically when she spoke even the word 'hello'?

I wondered it so often- this time as I watched her run back down the corridor. A shaky breath escaped me. My lungs burned, as I forgot how to exhale when she was around. Her beauty, inviting yet lethal, had a way of wrapping its perfect claws around my throat. Speaking to her was gasping for oxygen. The experience, as it always did, left me dizzy.

I tried to collect my thoughts as I balled the program up in my shaking hands. Around me, dim lights flashed, blinking twice to give a five minute warning. I needed to move if I didn't want my seat to be taken. But traces of her perfume, that impossible balance of lime and lily, still drifted in the air. It made my head spin, once again leaving me drunk enough in the sensation to stay frozen in place. Especially now, it would feel impossible to leave until the scent, her signature, had faded.

Eventually, the aroma dissipated, and I knew that it was time. The show would be starting any minute. As I lifted my foot to walk away, the realization finally sunk in. It collapsed on me like a piano had fallen out the sky, cartoon style, and obliterated my body into the ground where I stood. For the second time tonight, I struggled to breathe.

In an hour and a half, just two short acts, she would be gone from my life forever. The girl who pretended to read palms, the girl who preferred her coffee black, the girl who thought she knew what was best. The girl who changed my life forever. I had to leave her and the person I had grown to be behind, locking the memories away- only kept alive in the darkest corner of my mind. It was easier that way, probably. I was giving up her intoxicating love, and replacing it with even less logical, rational choices now. By nine o'clock, I would walk out the heavy theater doors and try, with unimaginable desperation, not to look back.

And she had no idea.