Her car rolled away, up the winding hills which cratered this little town. It rose up the snow covered mound, and dipped down as it reached the snowy peak, erasing her from view. I wondered if I’d ever see her again, maybe a couple years from now. After she had finished college, and I had finished nothing, maybe we would bump into each other at a coffee shop. We would have some terribly awkward interaction, laddered with small talk and trivialities. I’d ask her how she had been, and she would tell me how she just finished her PHD or her masters or whatever it is people who go to college in London get. And all her successes and accomplishments would remind me how I had wasted the last 4 years of my life. How I was un-published, un-recognized, and un-employed. Pattering away at my type-writer into the late hours of the night. Working on poetry and stories that I would never finish, and even if I did finish them, who would read them?
…
I turn and I walk away, choosing not to look at the spot where she had once been. The air is bitter, and cold, and the wind whips across my skin and cuts me up and down and across my face. My hands are tucked inside my coat, and I peer down at my feet as I trudge through the snow that lays across the ground in a thick paste. The sky is hazy, and the sun is blocked out by the thin wisps of gray clouds. They trace the sky, like remnants of something that once was, but is no more.
…
She cried right before she left, with her black hair curling and tumbling down across her back and her breast. Her muted brown eyes brimmed with tears. Before she let herself cry, she buried her face into my chest and threw her arms around me. She wouldn’t let her tears feel the cold January air, so instead she let them swell into the fabric on my chest. The spot where her eyes rested grew into a large, frigid damp spot. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I rested my chin on top of her head, and I held her there. She shook because she was cold, and because she was scared, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t shake. I let go of her, and took the edges of my coat, and wrapped her in it. We must’ve looked odd, two kids standing in the snow holding each other for an awfully prolonged period of time. One of us crying silently, the other looking at the snow covered hills and cocooning the sobbing girl in his coat.
…
As I pace the snow covered sidewalk, I close my eyes and stop to listen to the cars. They fly past and around me, sending sound waves that come as quickly as they go. They, like many things, are passing me. As they move, I stay. I am stagnant, and they are pushing forward. All in this world seems to be moving away from me, leaving me behind in the snow. But I can’t blame the cars, I can’t expect them to remain with me. I am the one who is deciding not to move, they should not hinder themselves simply because I am too petulant to bring myself forward. They must exist for themselves, and they must progress. And it is not my place to halt them. Nor would I want to halt them. Even if I could make them stay with me, I would not. I would rather collapse and die then have them stay with me, and stagnate as I stagnate, and live as I live. Like some hermit, refusing to change. Refusing to progress. Refusing to do anything, save for stand in the snow and brood over that which I cannot and would not change.
…
Before she left, she let go of me, and looked up at me. Her pale, powdered skin was littered with freckles, and the cold wind had hued her cheeks in a permanent blush.
“I’ll miss you.” She said.
“I’ll miss you too.” I said.
“I love you.” She said.
“I love you too.” I said
And with that, she reached up and grasped me at my collar, brought her head up, and kissed me softly on the lips. Then, she turned away, and got in the car. She waved solemnly, and drove away. Up the hill, then over the hill, then away from the hill. Away from this town, and away from me. When her car disappeared, tears fell down my face, and my hands were too cramped by the cold to wipe them away.
…
She will go to London, and I will stay right here. She will make something of herself, and I will stay right here. She will achieve, and live, and breathe, and love, and laugh, and exist. And I will stay right here. I will remain, and I will write poems and stories and all these things that no one will ever read. But I will still write them. She, like the cars, like everything, is moving away from me. And I would not have her stay with me, even if I could. She will become beautiful things, things that are more beautiful than she already is. And I was not meant to stop that. The cars must move away from me. And I am to stay, right here, and watch them move away.