On the Street Where She Lives
"The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them"
-Thomas Merton; No Man is an Island
He stops at that street corner, his eyes brushing over that familiar window. The curtains are closed, light filtering through but revealing no silhouettes of the inhabitants within. His feet can't help taking him here, every now and then, stopping as cars continue to breeze by behind him and people rush around him, almost as if he is not there.
He plunges his numb fingers into his jacket pockets, his neck arched up and dark eyes fixated upont hat light. There is a slight flutter of the curtains, the slightest movement, and then it is gone.
He wonders if she's laughing up there, red lips parted in that enticing way she sometimes had. He had been the cause of her laughter many times before, the cause and the reason. He'd never seen her tears though, soft drops clinging to her sooty eye lashes, stubbornly refusing to fall just as she refused to shatter. No, he had never been the cause or reasons for her tears. She saved her vulnerability for another, for him she had only shared a perfect smile and demure tones. Underneath lay a girl he had only caught a glimpse of once, sitting in a corridor together, and then the door was shut on him forever. He'd chased it though, chased that glimpse of that fragile creature with claws as sharp as knives. He always seemed to be chasing things he never could quite catch…
He sighs heavily, absently rubbing the crick from his neck. He indulges himself with one more second to fixate upon that rectangle of yellow, before shaking himself, turning his sneakers away. The girl he loved didn't even live here anymore, really she never had…