Romanticize

He said she romanticized life.

His words accusatory, as if he knew her after all this time, as if he even had the right.  

She flashed back to the first time she looked into his hazel eyes.

Romanticize? she thought. Wondering what he could mean, until she remembered what he could have seen in her years before. 

Someone could hold the door and she would find a future in those brief seconds. Someone could smile from across the room and she would follow the what ifs in her mind.  She would find magic in sunsets and moonlight. See sparkles in dew on morning grass and bliss in butterflies fluttering by flowers. She romanticized them in all their memories that she held onto tightly in hopes to never lose herself in love again.

She didn’t romanticize life, she romanticized him. How he could calm her down, listening and being as hopeful for her dreams as she was, if not more. She saw a future in their late night drives, and bittersweet goodbyes, hoping eventually they would get it right.

Somewhere along the lines that part of her died.  

He said she romanticized life as if it were some sort of insult that she found beauty in something so cruel and temporary. He broke her once again in his words cold with reality yet full of love. She realized how lost, how unhappy, how broken she was.

How was she supposed to come back? She pleaded to the universe asking why she seemed to be cursed as she had so much love to give yet it was never returned.  Losing any and all hope she had left, as his words rang incessantly in her head. 

Until one summer night she met this guy with eyes the color of fresh coffee, who seemed so inexplicably perfect for her. His smile lit up her soul, his gaze locked into hers sparking her back to life, his laugh was contagious, adventure poured out of him, and chaos ignited his aura. It felt as though the universe aligned into their very own romantic comedy.

Pieces of her wanted to fall so badly, into the words he spoke, into his actions, and the surprises he wrapped up into tiny tidbits of love. As he carefully held her close, kissing her, buying plane tickets and planning pieces of a future together. While the other part of her was scared to fall again, terrified to shatter, be broken by someone else, or worst of all, finally, a life and a person who loves her back.

He said that she romanticized life, but the truth is, she feared it and herself.

-xx Makayla Brooke