Word Count: 372
There’s a certain moon that only comes up when a once-forever love has passed on. It’s a moon pale as the skin of a sprite, with shreds of fine fairy hair wisping in clouds trailing behind it. It was the moon I’d expected to rise for some time, now full faced and hanging in the night sky over my head. I felt tears run like rain down my cheeks. More than her final words of goodbye, this was the clearest cut to my heart, wound to my soul.
She was an exchange student, there in her third year of college, same as I. We debated on opposite sides until finding we both saw the goal, we agreed that we simply were deciding on different paths. We were asked to either leave the debate club or choose the same team.
Every day with her was like that, a discovery of ways. The paths widening out through the forests of struggles and setbacks. Each of us coming out at some point in the same spot as the other. She had the most delightfully girly laugh and I teased her about it. She would pretend to be annoyed but her eyes gave her away.
As we neared graduation I’d decided to stay on for my graduate studies in Design Engineering. We had talked about this and about her furthering her own education there too. Then I thought we’d get married. But I noticed a lack of arrangement. She failed to register for classes for Fall. She grew cool as the weather and soon talked of going back home.
Our final debate revealed that her goals had changed and she claimed she’d been trying to tell me. She was probably right, and I hadn’t been listening as clearly, expecting everything to be in the right place at the end. The day that she left was a slash in the world I had woven. I found myself walking the streets of the small college town believing that somewhere I’d find her. That she’d only taken a different trail.
Now the moon laughs in its slow ascent across the black night and I’m listening, listening hard for it’s girlish giggle but there’s silence and only the stars.
