short story (to see her once more)

heres the short story, kinda gotta go to bed now, goodnight!!!

To See Her Once More.

There’s a neighborhood, with few people and even less trees than normally expected, except for one. Despite being in terrible condition, I sit under it every day, all alone with nothing but a journal and a pen. Months pass as the tree slowly but surely decays, for the shadow of its former self only seems to serve as a memory now. When the tree is at its last breath, with dead branches barely holding on, a new person moves into the now lifeless neighborhood. And she looks like she stepped right out of a dream, with curly black hair, honey-colored eyes and a light pink dress…

She becomes all I write about and all I think about for months, with only making minimal contact out of fear. I still sit at the now dead tree, yet one day, she walks over to me and sits on the floor next to me. She asks “why do you always sit here at this dead tree, don’t you feel miserable?” “Of course I do, yet I sit here daily to remember the time I spent with this tree before it’s passing,” I barely manage to get out, with sweat accumulating on my palm as I grip my pen.

 She only smiled at me and replied “Even if the time you spent was what you enjoyed with the tree, your memory shouldn’t serve as a chain, but better as a happiness wherever you go.” She gets up and extends her hand to me, and I have a sudden impulse to reach for it, like an exit out of this pit I dug myself in search for happiness. I start spending time with the girl with curly black hair and honey-colored eyes, and only getting closer with every moment we see each other. Yet only after 3 months, she tells me that she has to move away in a week, and I become scared. I get scared that, in the end, I’ll never see her again and the memories of her become nothing but a regret I’ll always hate myself for…

I don’t see her at all for the rest of the final week, until Sunday. Her house becomes empty and all you can see is the moving trucks ready to leave and her standing outside. I sat under the dead tree for the last time, and within moments, I saw her approaching with tears forming in her eyes as she threw herself at me into a tight embrace. She was mad at me, mad because in the end, I jumped back into that hole of fear, back into a cocoon of comfort where I thought that if I ignored it, everything would be fine. I couldn’t stop apologizing, and we only stood there in the same embrace, as if time stopped for a while, yet eventually she had to let go. 

After she composed herself, she told me “You could’ve just given me your phone number and still hung out with me, you know that right!?” I only nodded, and gave her my phone number on a small piece of paper ripped out of my journal. And as the sky slowly started to get darker, and her time in this hellhole slowly dissipated, we talked and laughed until we couldn’t breathe. The sky was dark, the tree blended into the background, we could hear each other’s breath as we got closer till we locked lips for the first time. Unfortunately, it was short-lived as she had to leave only seconds after.

 And as I saw her get into her car and wave goodbye, I got up from the tree and went inside. I stopped sitting at the dead tree, for I didn’t want to keep a memory that was long gone, but instead remember the times I spent with that girl, and to see her once more would be a miracle that took place on Earth. At least in my eyes.

-Dany 3/4/24 1:19 AM