To have and to hold (written in drafts fall 2019)

Light dew after a thunderstorm, blood staining the fingertips of a pin-pricked little girl.

She’s hurt, she knows that, but she doesn’t mind.

In fact, the stinging complements the ringing in her ears from all the ‘sorrys’ she got today.

Strangers in her home, with bleary eyes and sad smiles.

A sea of black formalwear, she’s a pale-faced ghost floating from place to place, putting on the show.

But she feels nothing, empty.

They watch her with careful and cautious precision,

waiting for her to break.

Such a young girl, she should be crying from the loss of her brother, her best friend.

She’s just putting on the brave face for the company, they whisper.

But she feels nothing, empty.

She runs her thumb along the dried blood on the broken mirror in front of her,

gazing from her hand to the shards she exposed earlier.

They tell her that he loved her. Loved, as if she didn’t already know that.

She loves him too. She will continue to love him too. Forever.

For the most beautiful things in the world, are also the most painful

And to love something is to fear ever losing it.