Annabel Lee

by scorpion22

Told from the perspective of the poet himself, this is the love story of Annabel Lee. Read how a man falls helplessly in love with this beauty only to lose her and the choice he makes in order to be reunited with her once more. Includes quotes from the poet himself. I own nothing. M for later chapters.

Chapter 1

My sweetheart lies in a grave six feet deep. I put her there only a few years ago, but she still lingers on my mind. I often see her ghost floating behind closed and open eyes. I see her memory asking me to explain how we got to this place, but I have no answers only my own mourning as I try to find my way without her. I just can't escape my Annabel Lee. My spectral temptress in her dress of white linen, her hair floating around her each silvery strand glowing in the moonlight of my eyes as her cobalt blues look into mine, and in those moments, I feel her. I feel her in the wind as it touches my cheek as she once did. In the sea as it brushes my ankles as I step towards our forgotten kingdom, our lost fortress where my beloved walked with me once, and yet as I smell the sea breeze, it comes as only a harsh reminder of how it carried my Annabel Lee away. Here in this place, I feel my beloved most. I see her waiting for me, her bare feet white with sea foam in the sand, and she is floating away. Into the sea where she will die. With her eyes, she is always looking at me, asking me to save her from her sad fate, but I can't move. I am hopeless without her unable to reverse the things of our past. For even as I hope to bring her back and fix the past that shattered us so, I cannot, but walk into my future alone. With only a ghost at my side and my heart forever in her hand. My beloved Annabel Lee, she's long dead, but still my memories of her roam free.

I remember still how we met, not in our kingdom, but farther away where our origins reigned. When I was a boy of six and ten and she a girl of two and ten, our eyes set upon each other, and though she could not see me, I saw her clearly. I saw my love with the stars of the fair while she only saw a boy who was older still. It would be years before she saw the moons in my eyes and though she held my heart from the first, she didn't take it in her hand until those years later when she found love for me in return, and it was there walking hand in hand that we stumbled upon our kingdom. When we were young, we were carefree our spirits alive. My Annabel Lee didn't speak to me when we met at ten and two, the enigma of her sparked the flame for me and yet when I think of her silent eyes, I am left with questions that my love nor her ghost cannot answer for me now. Questions I thought there would be time for before my Annabel Lee was taken from me. Until our love was sparked many years later, she never said a word, and yet she seemed to watch me with a child's curiosity. Now, I wonder what those eyes were saying when she didn't have the words. If she loved me from afar before I dared to know or if our spark began as our history foretells. I can never know though. I must simply remember the first time I saw her love for me echoed in her great eyes of blue. My flame of love had been burning for her four years without wavering when she dared to return it. I knew it by the touch of a hand, by the touch of her lips upon my cheek, and the quiver in her bones at the action. How she took my hand and led me through her halls and whispered her secrets into my ears. My Annabel Lee opened herself up to me and all too suddenly, we were walking from all that had been known. That was how we found our kingdom by the sea, for as we were searching for solitude hand in hand our feet found the sand, and Annabel Lee took my hand to lead me to our place where our love would begin and end. The day was a Sunday with church bells tolling in the waning sea breeze. We stood hand in hand with the sea flooding all around us until we were ankle deep and in that moment the sea made us one. With our fingers interlocked and our eyes lingering, my Annabel Lee and me came together as one. Two lovers or soulmates meant to be our lips dancing together as the sea mist rose to christen us. In time our lips parted while our eyes lingered all the more as we danced as newlyweds might, the sea foam at our heels, and our journey having just begun. We danced then as lovers are meant to and together, we made memories that now are so very cherished by me. Her hair would cover my hands as I held the small of her back. She wore it as a cape as we danced my feet carrying the tune that she followed. We never missed a step until with my arms full of her, I swept her away into the air, and when I spun her, she laughed. Her laugh was that of a woman yet also that of a little girl immersed in joy. She threw her head back and beamed until I dropped her to the sand, my own body coming to join her. We were happy there, in our kingdom by the sea that we were creating with each step that we seemed to take. It was then that I found myself looking at her as the moonlight came to eliminate the sun that had come before. I looked upon my Annabel Lee with the moon in her hair and the sand on her skin. I swooned at the sight of her, and it was there as we lay united lovers in our newly formed kingdom that the sea came to envelope us blessing our kingdom for the first time.

"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears" I whispered to her as the sand and waves of the sea clung to us, her smile making the words fade away so that I could only look at her, my heart completely in her grasp, and in that moment the only choice my future could have was with my beloved. Our end was written in our beginning though, for though we couldn't be separated, but in death, I brought her there when we first began to walk by our kingdom with the sea in the breeze.

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity" I thought, for that was the nature of my love for her, our kingdom built upon that love as we reigned their hand in hand with our toes leaving their imprints in the sand, and this, I believed, was our future until my dearest loves demise. She was my queen, and I was her king. I was proud to serve her as she gladly served me. We were on our journey before it all seemed to be washed away by the sea that had guided us so much so before. She was the queen of my heart, of my soul, and my mind. I lived to make her happy until it was all so suddenly washed away into the sea.

"We loved with a love that was more then love" I whispered, picturing my spectral goddess as she stands always with me in all her exquisite beauty, for that is how I choose to remember my dearly departed Annabel Lee, the wind in her hair, and the sand between her toes as I walk with her.

With her white toes muddy with sand, her eyes on me, and her smile so soft. My heart is eternally claimed by my Annabel Lee. By her visage in my mind, the sound of her laughter an echo in my ears, and her ghostly fingers clutching my heart. It is why her spirit haunts me, lingering in the back of my mind, and the depths of my heart. Death cannot take her love from me nor can it take my heart from her. Annabel Lee shall always be my only true love. This I swear until I join her beneath the sea in our grave where now she waits for me.

"The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world" I whispered at the thought of her waiting in her watery grave beneath the depths of the sea for me, for soon I too shall die, and I'll take her hand again where we can walk once more in our kingdom beneath the ocean deep. I'll see her again and we'll be joined, soul to soul, in our kingdom by the sea. Together, we'll float side by side in our thrones of seaweed, and sand. We'll be the king and queen of our kingdom once more and look upon each other as lovers do. My Annabel Lee will be returned to me and I to her. We'll be the lovers of old and join together as lovers, partners, and more.

We'll share our tender kisses, and our sweet love will live again. I can feel that day coming closer, always closer, and that is why I tell my story now. Our love story, me and my Annabel Lee, our tale of tragedy, and our tale of the hereafter. I walk alone in our kingdom by the sea, for the first time since the loss of my Annabel Lee. I loved her so much and so well that the smell of the sea pains me as I look at the cool still waves.

Our waves that haven't moved since they captured my dearest love. They took her from me and dragged her below until she rose to the surface as still as a stone. My Annabel Lee died and so did I. Our story had a beginning that I intend to tell and an ending which will be told too. I'll tell you now the story of my precious Annabel Lee and me.