To Whom it May Concern (ON HOLD)

The Acquiring of Violet

September 2, 2014
The rest of the day had been a flickering blur of yellow lights and rain. People came and left and their faces and voices slid into each other at slanting angles, mixing and colliding with the severity of my exhaustion.

I had waited, foolishly, I know that, for him to come through the doors. I thought it was possible, if I thought about the situation enough, and with the most attentive hope I could muster that maybe, maybe he would come. Yet, this all was likely connected to my stained recollections of the night before and memories filled with color that had drifted through my mind in implosions of past emotion.

People had walked into the little shop with the wonder filled breathlessness I normally exhibited, but I was just trying not to think about James. His warm brown eyes sparkled like fire from behind bookshelves, and the soft tapping of his fingers fell over me like a haze, enclosing me in the thoughtful rhythms of his mind. I had watched people stare at the titles with barely contained curiosity and the only name I cared about was his. They flipped through the pages with light, floating, fingers and I held onto the light brushes of his fingertips when he led me, and held me, and comforted me.

I missed him, and the first time he was ever gone, I needed him the most. I needed him for me and I wanted him to need me for himself.

The shop had closed at 5:00 and I trudged with a quiet thoughtlessness through the damp air. A cool wind fell silently over the trees but I was sweating in my heavy coat. His gloves were warm around my fingers and I lifted them softly to brush the damp hair off of my neck. The smell of pages clung delicately to my nose and I felt a small smile slide of my cracked lips.

James had always told me I smelled like a story. He said I never needed perfume because my hair was laced with the scent of trees and the warm roughness that came from the pages. He was a poet. He knew it, he used beautiful words like it was easy. He could say what he thought because his words came out right.

His words were a song and I missed them now. I missed them as I walked through the empty parking lot. As my feet hit the leaves and the burning colors crackled into the restless silence. The air lay still as I opened the car door. I laid my head down on the dashboard, hair falling around my face. Then, with a quiet sigh, I drove home, the wind pushing leaves to the ground.

My apartment was a welcoming burst of warmth, and it was with a gentle hand I pushed the door close behind me. The wall stood tall and firm behind me and with a sigh I slipped to the floor. My eyelids fluttered slowly and with a small yawn I pushed up, off the wall, and grabbed the book he bought me from the table.

The paper cover of the book was wrinkled just slightly where he had played with the corners of the pages as he read. Usually this was bother me, but now a small bubble of giddy, girlish excitement guzzled through me and I smiled again, he had run through the rain for me.

The old yellow light hummed over my head and with another flustered smile I settled down on the floor in front of the couch. Books lay out in piles around the room and my eyes skimmed the bright titles with love before holding my new one against my chest. He wanted to be part of my favorite story, I gripped the pages like they would fly way, and let his voice combine with I mine as I read the words to myself. Like he had read them to me.

If people could really be meant for each other. I wanted, at that moment, to be meant for no one but him.

This was the quiet, growing version of a miracle that he would talk about. A miracle I was only just understanding the full extent of, this was me seeing him.

It was that slow, warm violet color that crept sweetly across the sky, not asking for recognition, just changing the night in inching increments of color. The slow beautiful transition that changed the day, in all its glory to night, and you only noticed it just as it finished, and had become something even better.