** Welcome to ‘Wordplay Wednesday’. Normally you’d bounce through on a Wednesday and find a poetic offering. Today, I leave you a little fiction snippet that blossomed in my head recently. Not sure what it’s gonna be when it grows up, but for now? Here it is. Enjoy! **

She lost all capacity for conscious, rational thought. She couldn’t breathe. In that moment, she felt herself die. Just a tiny bit. Not enough to draw attention but enough for HER to know that a piece of her was falling away.

And all it took to sever this piece of her, this chunk of her heart was him saying three little words.

“I Miss You.”

In her mind, that signified the beginning of the end.

It always had. No man, not one, who ever said those words to her ever stayed around long enough to exchange them for something more permanent.

She never really understood this “missing” stage. He didn’t know her. Not really. How could he miss what or who he didn’t know?

She convinced herself that what he thought he missed was the image of her that he had in his head – the person he thought she was, the woman who strolled through his imagination owning every thought. That wasn’t her.

Yes, they all missed the woman they thought she was. Yet, none of them stayed around long enough to know if they were one and the same, this imagined her and the reality of her.

She was sad. Sad that they “missed” this surface level “her” and so, their energy was focused on that, not on going below that very surface. And she was sad because, if they missed the person she wasn’t, she knew they wouldn’t recognize the person she really was when she showed up. They would say things like, “Something’s different” or “You’ve changed” when in reality, she hadn’t changed – she’d just…shown up fully fleshed out.

And so, she smelled leaving in the air. It brought a melancholy smile to her face. One which he misconstrued as her welcoming his words. He never looked closely enough to realize that the smile never really reached her eyes. And it never once traced a path to her heart. That path remained grown over by past pain, heartaches too recent to mention, and a yearning that wouldn’t let her rest.

“Don’t.”

That’s all she could manage to say through her haze of self-imposed sadness.

He moved closer to her, still smiling, anxious to take her in his arms, to feel the warmth of her pressed gently into him. “Don’t what? Miss you…want you….love….you? Too late. I do. Miss you. Want you…..love…you.”

He was right. It was too late.

Standing there in plain view, she began to disappear right before his very eyes. Physically she stood there – shaking slightly as she realized what he said.

Emotionally – she was miles away…and still running.

Copyright 2007 ~ Jackie Young

Live DELICIOUSLY!