‘I hope you understand why it took me a year and four months to let you in,’ she told him. ‘It’s just that I’ve come to learn what it means to love people deeply and lose them so suddenly. Life has taught me that I need to be cautious of sweet words and smooth hands with long fingers. But the first time I saw your hands, all I thought about was how they would hold me when I am on the verge of a breakdown. When what I should have thought about was how those same smooth hands could break me apart.
Yes, I admit. You make me forget people leave.’
‘I’m not leaving’ he replied.
‘Not today,’ she added.
And one day, he woke up and decided to leave. But the truth is that he had already left a long time ago. It started the day he didn’t say good morning to her as he used to, then he didn’t ask about her day, it went on and he stopped randomly blurting out I love you.
She asked him, ‘When they ask who the love of your life is, do you think of me?’.
He didn’t reply.
‘I was numb and didn’t notice how you were pulling away from me. I knew something was wrong but you wouldn’t tell me anything. You were there with me physically, you would still talk to me, still, laugh at my jokes, still hold my hands when you could but you weren’t there mentally, wholly. You didn’t tell me your fears anymore. You wouldn’t tell me about your problems. You wouldn’t tell me your worries. Even when you laughed with me, it had started to become different, it didn’t have the same life, the same spark.
You were numb towards me. It was like you stood on a highway filled with fast cars but you were not afraid.’
He didn’t reply.
‘What happens to our promises now?“ she asked. “The hopes I was hanging on to? The dreams that kept me up at night? Where do they go? Do I live them with another man? Only for them to be taken away again? Or do I bury them as if they died with the love we thought we had?’
‘Keep them to yourself,’ he replied holding her with his smooth hands. ‘Live all the promises, dreams, and hopes by yourself. Don’t let them die.’
But all she kept thinking was that she needs to protect herself from smooth hands and sweet words, sweet nothings and unbecoming.