Love's Dying Road

In the dark, her long hair streaks the dusty ground with its black strands. They crest and fall as sharply as her breath, barely escaping her pressed lips. Try as she might, she cannot seem to mark out their familiar road.

Moonshine casts its long, whitewashed gleam across the endless dirt, almost vanishing in the overpowering black. Squinting her eyes, she wills herself to see through the darkness, to harness the last fragments of light that hold her world together. In her heart, she hopes that the road she knows will not completely disappear or all will be lost.

In the daylight, she is invisible, her fatigued body fusing with the hot rays. Summer absorbs her in its swelter, burying her dark and summoning her fire. She rises across the dusty streets, which carry the burdens of long, battled days passed.

She fuses with the knowing that her familiar world will die, if she lets it. Determinedly, she projects summer's heat through her limbs, reviving any suffocated, wilted life and shining a familiar pathway for a survivor to follow. Her long hair maps out street marks desperately. They swirl in and out of existence, depending on her memory. Her strands are like candle wicks, which burn alight with hope as they shine, waiting for his mystery to reappear.

At night, he is a fixture in the moonshine, a silent figure that lingers. Under his matted brown hair, a cigar billows its long, wistful smoke from his mouth, glowing with a tiny warmth that kindles within her. She cannot meet his grey gaze, as it merges with the wisps of smoke, intriguing her with his state. He has absent eyes, yet chiseled cheek bones to graze, with her cold, nightfall caress.

Away from day's heat, she is chilled with a frost. In these moments, she can barely move, the weight of sadness overpowering her. Nights are the most difficult for her to survive, without the comforting warmth of his body holding her close.

Absent is his presence each time they meet, wafting away further down their road, deeper into the dark. It is a mere snippet of memory of the last time she saw him, when his gaze was distant and yearning. He had pushed her away, allowing the night air to absorb him in its realm, leaving their world in a fragile state.

His smoke had swirled around her body, stinging her skin with its overpowering stench. It was the smell of panic, dirt and destruction; of emptiness and absence. His smoke still lingers on her skin, swirling its presence around her most nights. She can feel his diffused longing to stay, to bury himself deeply into her arms and to ignore his desire to see the future, without her.

Tonight he has not appeared, not even a trace of his smoke. A great dread fills her heart, a fear of his fate and his safety. The world beyond them is terrifying at best with roads unjourneyed and possibly no remorse. It is a future they were both invited to step into, away from the comfort of their own time. A future that she declined.

It was a fear he never seemed to feel, their long held relationship not enough for him to hold onto. There were new paved roads to explore, other connections to make, that did not seem to include her.

The thought of life without him rips away at her heart. Waiting out the night hours, she remains frozen, her body shaking with sadness.

As the sun rises, her body thaws, allowing her to fuse with the heated light rays once again. Summoning her anger, she unleashes it across their memories, setting their world ablaze with fury. Tearing her fire across their journeyed streets, her eyes water at the power of the fire fuming across her long haired streets.

The streets burn, yet do not disappear. Fragments of black strands dot the dusty ground, stubbornly refusing to depart. Her remaining street memories chime in rhythm with her heart.

Try as she might, she cannot control her road's journey completely, yet must let a major part of her life go.