The Day The Fear Came Crawling Back

She sat her ruffled dress upon the dirty steps on her porch and tried not to cry by peeking at the sky in all its glamour. The stars left little space for black, and as she peered back down, she saw a reflection of a star, like stardust, in his eye. It was at that moment that she couldn’t hold it in anymore and a single tear tumbled slowly down her right check. She remembered what she felt in that moment, but she didn’t want to remember. She thought in time, memories like these are better as distant images in your mind, but she let the feelings flow through her. With him, she never felt that fear, she only felt comfort.

When she was younger, she shared a room with her sister. Her room was pink with flower-embroidered curtains that draped down to the carpet. Her little sister’s bed was purple with just one teddy bear plumped right in the middle of her two pillows. Her little sister always held the teddy bear and it was starting to rip at the seams — if you looked closely, white cotton was foaming out of its right foot. One day she noticed the teddy bear hadn’t been moved. It stayed in one spot for what seemed to be a week; she jumped up onto her sister’s bed, one knee at a time, to grab the teddy and hug it tight in her arms. As she looked up, she saw the door open slowly as her parents filed in one by one. The words they spoke came out in sobs, and she suddenly realized her sister was gone and the teddy bear was all she had left.

It was her fear of death that kept her living her life so carefully, but with him she wasn’t scared anymore. She didn’t care to live life like there was no tomorrow because she wanted to live every day with him. She knew that he was enough. She gave up everything until this moment. She helped him shove his belongings into his suitcase, and as she waved goodbye, her heart dropped and the fears of her past came crawling back. And she knew this wasn’t good.