I knew the truth. Love changes like the seasons: cold rains fall, leaves rot, people leave.
I watched as her finger traced the veins on the backside of the leaf. Her touch, like Braille, feeling each line as if a road on a map. I saw the future, like the beauty surrounding us, disappearing into mist. Yet, I had convinced myself: This is now. It is fine to love someone a little too much.
“What will you do with a leaf?”
“Press it between the pages of a book,” she said.
“Look up.”
The sky was a canopy of stars. The moon hung, ripe, against a backdrop of black and light.
She asked, “Is this not a beautiful night?”
I nodded.
Her eyes glittered gold, “Like a Van Gogh canvas and we’ve stumbled into the scene.”
I slipped her small hand in mine. “Promise.”
“Anything,” she had said.
“When the world turns ugly, you’ll stay beautiful.”
~ excerpt from a scene
Draft One
“when the world turns ugly,…”- source unknown
cliches, quotes, venations, parallel lives
Fiction
