…stuck on the surface of the table where she typically works on, a meeting place for unfinished lyrics and exhaustion. The table whose distinction from his cluttered one was its pristine and gleaming surface as if no teardrop from frustrations has reached it.
If there was anything close to the joy of possibly coming home to him, it was this. Weeks of exhaustion had taken its toll and she’d lost the best of her, putting her in the disposition she forbid herself to be in as seen unreasonable. But it pays off somehow. It does because she’s a lucky one who found someone who took her mess (tears, snot, eye bags, obnoxious habits and all) along with everything else.
She laughs softly, taking notice of the little detail. Finicky as always, she is. This guy writes over the red grid, she thought. It was symbolic somehow. Similarly, he stepped over the walls she built up so high she thought no one could ever. He didn’t even need to jump. All it took was a single step. And once inside he broke them down with ease even when he’d claimed he’d lost his arms.
He was strong. The strongest person she knew, in fact. He didn’t believe that either. Too low on self-esteem that it frustrated her how blind he was to the paragon that he is.
But that was his charm. His modesty. Behind closed doors, he was all but self-possessed. Every little thing he says would either be sweet, surprising, worrying, apathetic even, or anything else except vexing, and they were always laced with humility.
So why? She wonders. She wonders why when if not because of him, she wouldn’t be bright and radiating of optimism at all. If not because of him, she wouldn’t be sweet and agreeable. If not because of him, she would have been happy but unwelcoming of her blessings and distant to the people that cared. If not because of him, she would have been worn out by a perfectly feigned routine and blind to her potential saccharine.
This is how it becomes a cycle; with each returning the same amount of gratitude which grew whenever the cycle started over and continued. Unknowingly giving and willing to reception.
This is how everyday becomes a celebration of a feat. She didn’t stop. She was a skeptic. She never gave up. She was too stubborn. Contrariwise to the conventionally faulty traits, she was thankful because it got here where she was now — where they are.
This is how no one thing becomes a rue. There was nothing she wanted to change, not even the rocky beginnings. Not even the fact that she’d been in a terribly harrowing instance of the past that changed her for the worse.
And this is how a simple gesture becomes the single reason that blots out the woes that amounted to years piled up in a cloud over her head. This is how she could answer when he asks if it’s true love she feels. It is. She could say for sure, it is. “Silly,” she mutters as she picks up the note as if the paper was his hand and the ink in print on it, his eyes. “I wish you’d recognize just what and how much you can do.”
