That night, when she was joyfully saying farewell to twenty four she also said goodbye to the person she thought he was.
They met in a sleepy town. She was young and naive, and knew exactly what she wanted from this life. In her sixteen years she knew but one thing, she loved love and would do whatever it took to feel it. She met him over the scent of fumes and diesel. He made her laugh, which wasn’t hard to do but he did it well.
She could feel his love, and knew that it wouldn’t die. He was a safe house in an uncertain world. She painted her perfect picket fence, counted the children and the years they would spend together before he even grabbed her hand in declaration of their courtship.
She planned and worked and schemed until that image in her head was a reality. The only difference is that she was not the person she thought she’d be in that image. She wasn’t a happy dutiful housewife, she was much, much more. She grew too big for that life and he grew away from her, coward beneath her shadow. She took from him his strength and his unwavering certainty of the life they created.
They spent three years after the day they said I do growing in opposite directions until one day she didn’t even recognize the man who stood before her. That day was the first day she started playing with matches.
yellowtwentyfive 