Distant Laughter
By October Breeze
The solemn, raven-haired teen took one step forward, her feet landing on dry, curled leaves that crunched against the pavement of the nearly vacant park. She stopped on the sidewalk for a moment, pushing her chilled hands into the sleeves of her coat.
Where had the months gone? she wondered, her deep blue eyes drifting towards the gray sky. A frosty breeze nipped at her cheeks, already pink in the cold, October weather as a distant laugh echoed past the trees, their branches waving, making crackling noises that mocked her as she slowly turned around. Tousled hair blew into her eyes as she searched out the source of the sound.
Another laugh and the sound of squeaking rust against rust filled her ears. Her eye s followed the sound until they rested on an empty swing set, the seats swaying eerily as if being pushed by invisible people.
She let out a rush of air. The laugh had been hers, only hers, as well as another voice that was mixed in...hisvoice. His laugh. It was merely an echo of what was. Her eyes remained blank as she stared at the swings until she forced them closed. The rustling of the remaining leaves, still clinging desperately to the branches of the trees surrounding her filled her ears.
A small cry escaped her lips. She lowered herself onto a cold, metal bench nearby, pulling her hands out of her sleeves and bringing them up to her face as if in prayer.
Again, she asked herself: Where had the time gone? Everywhere she turned, there were reminders of him, her old life, and her old self. More than anything she yearned for that sense of security again, but she knew it had been lost long ago, as if a precious stone that she had forgotten to care for, and she had watched helplessly as it slipped out of her fingers...her life...the stone crashed onto the ground, shattering into a million pieces.
She lowered her hands onto her lap and squinted her eyes as the wind stung her eyes, its whispers following her, running in and out of her hair. She clasped her fingers together.
She was past her 'if only's,' 'what if's,' and the like. Accepting that she was once again alone, thrust out into the harsh world, and that there was not one thing she could do to change that was, well...the first step of healing herself.
But she couldn't stop herself from wondering...the flame they had shared, could she have urged it to burn longer? She had known things were coming to an end long, long before they truly split apart, but she had tried to grasp the relationship, cradle it, but somehow, it had only made it worse.
There were clues that she should have caught. The way he refused to meet her eyes directly, the way he avoided seeing her, the way he shied away from her touch...where had she gone wrong? What had she done?
A heart-wrenching yearning to hold him again swept over her, squeezing her heart with sharp claws, not allowing her to take another breath. She choked and wrapped her arms around herself, looking to the sky. She knew she still loved him. She always would.
As geese flew high above her head, flapping their wings gracefully as they headed south, attempting to fly south for the boding winter about to touch down onto the ground, the girl closed her eyes, feeling the whispery touches of the first snow flakes to fall that season brush against her cheeks as images flashed past her mind, but one staying firm printed in her memory:
Leon's smile.