Author: Elizabeth Hensarling
Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Hensarling
Land of Confusion
She stood mere feet from him. She smiled at him and swayed gently as he played; her long beautiful black hair blew gently behind her. The notes and lyrics streamed from him easily as he looked into her so blue eyes. She had always been that beautiful, since the first day he saw her a little more than two and a half years ago, at the same farmer’s market. He now stood at the exact spot he had then; he played the same song. She had told him that day, after his show, that she had loved the song, saying “A beautiful rendition.”
He’d sputtered and choked on his words as only a seventeen- year-old boy could. Somehow he’d managed to ask her to come the next weekend and he would play any song she wanted.
She’d asked for the same song. And over the next eight weekends a pattern arose. She’d request ‘their song’, as she would call it later, and afterward he would stutter out an invitation for the next weekend.
On the last weekend of the market’s season he had worked up the courage as he played ‘their song’ and other ones to ask her to go out with him. It had come out as an invitation for him to play ‘their song’ wherever she’d like. She laughed at him and told him to meet her at the coffee shop on the corner where the farmers’ market met and to leave the guitar at home. They planned for ten o’clock the next Saturday, and so a new tradition was built. Every Saturday at ten o’clock they would meet at a predetermined destination. The only rule was it could not be the same place as the previous weekend.
He’d often thought later that it was odd that they’d never exchanged numbers and had no way of communicating throughout the week. So his desire to be in her presence grew until Saturday when it burst out like a dam.
They’d never needed to contact each other, not really. They’d always show up at the exact same time on Saturday. Her on her bike and him driving. He’d offered her a ride once and she simply raised an eyebrow at him, and told him not to stray from their “lovely and simple routine.”
When she missed a Saturday at the original coffee shop, he had no way of contacting her. So, he just returned to the shop every Saturday at ten. When the farmers’ market opened again he went to the first spot they’d met at. He always played ‘their song’ to open just as he had before fall.
It was the last weekend of the farmers market when he was packing up, that a light touch on his shoulder made him turn, to see her. She looked paler and thin. Her long thick black hair was now short fuzz on her scalp. She only asked him to play the song for her, so he did. He played the song for her until the sun started to sink in the sky. Then he sat his guitar down and pulled her gently into him. No words were said. He never asked what she was sick with; although, it was obvious she was ill. He did, however, ask her where she would like to meet and if he should leave his guitar behind. Her gentle laugh made his heart stutter. Her smile though, faded as she told him, “Memorial Hospital.” He had nodded and asked if he could give her a ride. She looked relieved. He remembered how exhausted she had looked sitting in to passenger seat of his truck. She looked as though she would blow away.
For the next year and six months, he played ‘their song’ for her at Memorial Hospital. Every Saturday at first, and then on Mondays and Wednesdays too. That was when he’d met her older brother. He’d looked heartbroken and tired. When he’d introduced himself as her brother, he had laughed and told him that, “It was good to put a face to the song.” He would talk to her brother every day he saw her. It was always on his way out but it was hardly brief. He’d learned of their parents’ deaths and that she’d been fighting the same fight for six year, since she was eleven. It was only just now that it had caught up to her.
He began to crave those three days when he would, if only for a small moment, make her smile. He’d abandoned his spot in the farmer’s market and she’d berated him. He had simply told her he would do it next year, because he refused to play without her there. She had yelled, telling him to not get so attached. She was an accident waiting to happen. A volcanic eruption with a warning, and he should run far way before he was caught in her path of destruction. He’d cautiously climbed into her small bed to hold her as she cried. “I love you,” he told her. She’d apologized to him and said she wouldn’t say those three words aloud to him. She couldn’t leave him knowing she'd said them. He had understood and simply sang the song once more for her.
The next weekend he came and her brother stood there with tears in his eyes. He’d stopped and simply turned back around. He drove to the very spot in which he stood now, playing ‘their song’ for her.
He didn’t cry or yell. He wanted to but every time his eyes began to sting or his throat tightened he saw her eyebrow raise as she told him that crying over her was not part of their routine. And so he played and played, with her beauty on the backs of his eyelids and their song on his lips and tongue.
Love at First Sight
Soft pink skin, tiny button nose, small puckered lips, baby blue eyes squeezed shut. Tiny fists flail in the air along with chubby arms and legs. Tiny toes perfect for drooling all over. Soft baby fuzz, so blonde you can barely see it. How such a small thing can control your every emotion, you don’t know. You haven’t yet experienced the joys of being an older sibling. But as you hold the squirming figure, trying to soothe it before the tears begin. You think it will be impossible. But as soon as calm settles over the tiny one. The small soul merely stares up at you with eyes full of innocence only a newborn has. You, right in that instant, know that no matter how hard or impossible you will do everything to protect the bundle in your arms. The tiny soul that you have come to love so quickly, will always know it’s loved as long as you’re alive.
Remember, Before You Forget
Teenagers to most in the western hemisphere, we are a percentage of over dramatic nothings. We are no ones, entities that have yet to “earn” a voice amongst the crowd.
We know nothing of true emotions; we do not know love or hate. We cannot experience deep sadness or overwhelming exuberance. We’re too young to fall in love; because we fall so often. But how is our love any less loving than that of an adult’s? We fall fast and hard because the world has not yet calloused us. We are not yet afraid to feel all there is to feel. We embrace what adults refuse to. People lose their ability to experience things with the “volume” turned all the way up. Children and young adults have cranked the stereo of life all the way up. To feel and experience, so when they forget how to love and hate quickly, how to fall into an oblivion of sadness and feel monumentally happy. We can remember all we did and all we felt when we were over dramatic nothings.
Sorry for Falling
If you stood in front of me right now, I’d tell you how much you hurt me. I always seem so childish when I think about ranting to you. When I know I was nothing to you. I was just a person, just a person with a name and a face. But you were something to me. You were a lot to me. My distraction from sadness and anger; you were the person I loved. Every “I love you” that I said, meant something. They were something for the simple fact that I was in love with you. I have dealt with so much with you. Lies and secrets and hardness. Struggles, that had I not fallen for you I could have avoided.
I would like to tell you this too, I love you. You were my inspiration. I wish we were closer in more ways than one. I wish I could have heard your voice and experienced your presence. But we didn’t make it, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for falling in love with you.
Your Back Pocket
A decade and a half ago I hid something in your back pocket. I put it there so it would be protected and wouldn’t be tainted or hurt. I knew you would protect my artifact for me because you had gained my trust and I loved you. And now I’m afraid you’re going to take my artifact from me and not even know I had given it to you for protection. I’m afraid you will leave and never know that I had stowed something so precious to me in your pocket so long ago. And I’m afraid th
at if I tell you what I hid in there you’ll take it the wrong way. Because you see I hid a huge chunk of my heart. I hid my smiles and my tears. So many tears; my hopes, dreams and nightmares. I gave them to you because I knew you would never look for them or expect to be given such things from me. And to be honest I did not intend to give such a thing to you but you seemed to me, at so many times; when I was so afraid and felt so broken and alone; to be my only fan and my knight in tarnished armor because you have seen 100 more battles then me, and I’m sorry. I’ll take it back and though you have no knowledge of the precious and irreplaceable thing I’ve given to you. I’m frightened and hesitant to do such a thing, because I’m afraid that if you go you’ll forget me and I will no longer feel safe at the thought of any one person. But I need to protect myself and I will no longer put such an unknown burden on you, because I love you. I love you as the person you are in this moment and I loved you when you were a teenager so full of angst. You have always been my brother. The brother that I have never had to dream of, because I’ve never had a moment that I can recall that I couldn’t think of you. I need you to see that, I need you to see how much my brothers mean to me. I would not have trusted you so dearly if I didn’t love you so.
For my “adopted” brother
My Candle
It was always great in the beginning, but their beginning was over now. She had been right, he was no different from Him, and no one ever would be. And because of this, here she was; hiding, terrified that he’ll find her, desperately hoping he will. For her endings aren’t happily ever after, they are nightmares that leak into her waking hours. It’s been so, for as long as she could remember. Knowing that he turned out no different than Him broke her heart. She’d needed him to be different; she had never felt this way about someone before. No one had ever made her stomach buzz or toes tingle from just a glance in her direction. No one before had ever made her smile when her nightmares invaded the days; but he had done those things.
Today though, her happy days had come to an end. She’d not meant to slap him but she’d seen The Master’s face, and when he leaned in to embrace her she panicked and hit him. As soon as she did, she saw his beautiful face twist into a look of disbelief. She ran before it turned to anger and disgust. She hid inside their small bathroom and curled her body into a ball trying to be invisible. When a knock sounded on the door tears spilt over onto her cheeks.
“Baby, please come out.”
At the sound of his deceitfully soothing voice she began to shake. The Master had sounded soothing before he had done his horrible tortures that made her body tremble in fear to this day.
“Please come out so we can talk. I just want to help you, Love.”
She shook her head silently; she knew he was lying. He always lied to her to get her to do what they desired. He told her to do what they all desired and freedom would be granted to her… that had been a lie. But she had thought he would be different, he felt so different.
“Okay, I’m coming in. Please don’t run from me.”
The terror that tore through her caused her to shake violently. This was going to be it, he was going to do what the others and The Master had loved to do- he was going to hurt her. Perhaps he would end it once and for all, so she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. She cowered and pushed further into the wall as the door opened. He came in and crouched down in front of her. He reached out to touch her making her involuntarily flinch.
“Please don’t hurt me. I’m so sorry.”
He sat down in front with a ‘defeated’ sigh. The way he looked at her was as if his heart was breaking, but He had been a good actor too. When she would finally break down and cry and beg for forgiveness, He would apologize and say she made him do it. And if she was perfect and good next time he wouldn’t have to do it again. She believed him; she thought he felt love and compassion for her.
“Maggie, I won’t hurt you. I just want to know if you’re okay.”
The burn that had built up behind her eyes lessened as she looked at the man in front of her.
“Maggie, I would never hurt you, you know that. I love you. Please my love, come back to me.”
Recognition sparked in Maggie’s mind a moment before she threw herself onto the man in front of her.
“Ryland?” Maggie choked on the tears that squeezed her throat. “Ryland don’t leave me please. I’m sorry, so so sorry. Please don’t leave me alone.”
Ryland engulfed Maggie in his arms. “I won’t but tell me what happened?”
Maggie sobbed into his embrace as she shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to think about Him. She couldn’t understand why that had happened to her nor could she understand why this had.
She loved Ryland, he was the only good thing that had ever happened to her; the candle in her dark room. But she didn’t have the strength or the courage to tell him about what had happened to her, for all those years before she had finally escaped.
A Moment of Love
Love poems are written to show the wonders of love. But what about the pain? The feeling you have when your love is taken from you, or falsified. What of the events of jumping into the abyss of love blindly, hoping someone will jump with you. And when you emerge broken and bruised you look back up towards where you came and ask why they didn’t fall with you. So you feel all the great brightness of love drain from you and be replaced with dull pain.
However, in the recesses of your mind you remember the feeling. The utterly blissful happiness you felt and so you dry your tears and smile. Because you will never stop loving. The love stories and songs are there for that reason. The pain you feel will not stop you from loving freely, because a moment of true happiness is worth a lifetime of pain.