Snaps

Today I left you behind, in a little room with curtains. I didn't want to, but they insisted I leave. You looked alone and tense, but I walked away with a smile of reassurance, so you couldn't see my sadness. You didn't know, couldn't know - that I left a piece of me pressed against your lips.

With time to kill and nowhere to go, I sat on a grassy hill overlooking the chaos. Coffee in hand, I watched the people of my own neighbourhood wander. Some talking - to others, or themselves - some walking. Some lingering on street corners and bus stops, others driving off to lives I cannot see. I remember this sight through my windowpane in my younger years. When I used to call this MY stomping grounds.

It was a time when I was alone and broken. Embarrassed, not only to be where I was, but WHO I was. Nothing came or left from that tiny room, except my hope. I remember late nights, awake while the old console television flickered plots older than my rotting dreams. Despair, drier than yellowed wallpaper stained my soul, I was sure I could never beat the demon.

I watched this world around me, quietly. My silence screamed to days gone by and I struggled to find where the light is. Sunlight crept over the hill, climbed the shadows and rested on one knee. And then, I came back for you.

Relief flooded your face as I rounded the double doors and into your sanctuary. I fingered the snaps on the shoulder of your gown, undoing, redoing. The metal was warm from your skin beneath, leaving impressions of a never ending circle on the pad of my thumb. Although I was relieved to find you intact, the real reward came with the realization that with you, I am whole. I am no longer that other person I watched in my memories.

Goodbye, sweet girl.