Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks December 2014: Winter | Page 14

with bitter, hollow disappointment. This dress, that you were so carefully and lovingly
choosing, would never be worn for me. You would wear it for my brother.
Not long after we met, after helping you take down the sketches you had eventually
managed to affix to the wall with Cellotape, we went back to my house for some
tea and cake. We sat on my sofa and laughed the evening away, and then my brother
returned from work. He walked into the room, and that was that. For the months that
followed, there was no more talk of running away together, except an occasional jibe:
if things don’t work out, you and I will run away together once and for all! And as I
looked at you wearing that beautiful dress, the only thing I could feel was exhaustion,
having carried the weight of a love you would not share with me for so long.
Things didn’t work out in the end: not for you, or for him. However, we never ran
away together once and for all: there was no wedding, no dress, no joy, no solemn vow
of fidelity; only a broken promise. Like a winter storm you blew in, disrupting all in
your path but suffering none of the consequence; then blew out, and we never spoke
again.

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