When love fails
You would do anything to see a smile on her face. Anything at all. There was a day you ran through the rain to her door when she texted you that her room felt too big yet the air was thin, and you sat all night watching her breathe. And when she shivers in her sleep, you hold her. She must not break. She must not break.
Everything becomes less important when placed beside her. You want her alive. You told her the same thing every time she cried during an episode. Don’t leave. This was how you tried to make her stay. You set yourself on fire and be her warmth. On the days she pushed you away, you stood by the door. You knew you were a victim of her anxiety. So you wait, pray and listen for calm. Every storm should pass.
Maybe you were created to be for one person. It is enough ambition if all you do with your life is be there for a flower searching for bloom. The day she ran away, by God you lost your mind. Nobody knew where she went or saw her leave. You searched the entire campus looking for a fleeing angel. They were right. Your roommates always said that girls that wore black liners and black socks and black lipsticks hardly stay. That the weird ones eventually run. There's something about the brevity of good things. Shooting stars hold your breath for a second. And you live the wish at that moment before the world continues moving.
She started talking to a therapist after you insisted. And you would take her to most of the sessions and sit on the stairs of the medical complex to wait for her. On the day she ran, you raced there. And you saw your fears on the face of her therapist.
You know you were sent to her. One of God’s many divine interventions to keep her in the light. He must be frustrated and sad at his failed attempts to save her. Love should have won. Love should have won.
Her body did not look like one that fought for her breath. No evidence of battering or struggles. They found her floating on the stream that flows behind a faculty building. You should have gone there first. You should have known. She once likened her existence as a kind of dirt. That the only way out meant being washed off by an angry river as a sin scrubbed off the earth. You told her that she could make it upstream. That she was created to find salvation. But she would always call you her fine man after such conversations, her lips curving with such delicate precision into a glorious arc. On the day she ran, a text had entered your phone hours before you started looking for her.
"My fine man, I love you"
