The Day She Left

She was walking ahead of me as we transversed the airport.

I couldn't believe she was leaving, even though I'd had the date mentally circled in my brain for months now. Somehow her leaving never felt real until it was actually happening.

As we rode the escalator up to the departure deck, I gazed up at her body which was highlighted by the sun as it shone through the skylight above making her appear almost angelic or magical.

I was fighting with my emotions as if they were wild animals.

The drive from the room, the apartment, the place on this Earth that we had shared so closely was silent.

Yet in my brain I'd had a millions things to say. How I wanted to express my love, convince her to stay, tell her I needed her more than anything and that we could just tear up her ticket and run away and be happy together till the end of time.

If it had been a movie I'd been watched the cliches would have nearly made me sick.

Reality was smacking me in the face, hard.

The silence was like a wall between us.

She looked back at me as I lagged behind and gave me a smile.

A smile?

Was she happy? Trying to cheer me up? Being strong for the two of us?

It had been my first love. I was so young and I had fallen so hard and so quick. She was older. So caring and sensitive, yet I always felt that she wasn't as invested emotionally and psychologically as I. I knew she had been protecting herself and me.

I had never been so aware of each step I was taking as every one of them brought me closer to the moment when she would disappear down a narrow corridor towards another existence without me.

This wasn't her home. She was a visitor. It was never an option to stay.

Or was it?

A small part of me was trying so hard all this time to convince her not to leave. If only I could be funnier or dress better or make her feel as special as any person could feel? If only I could do those things I wanted to believe so badly that she would, in the end, choose me and not board that plane.

And yet, here we were. At an airport. As planned.

Was this how fairy tales ended? Didn't the guy get the girl? I had done all that I could and was I actually going to lose her?

And then we stopped.

It was time.

A muffled voice was calling passengers to present their tickets.

She looked at me as only she could.

And then we both started to cry.