To Be or Not To Be

She sat on the window ledge, hugging her knees to her. She looked down at the terrace below, vertigo setting in. He entered the room, his eyes sad. ‘Don’t’ he whispered, ‘please don’t’. She looked at him, her mind racing. How could he ever understand how she felt, how could he ever know what she had been through, the traumatic pain she has borne, the tears of blood she had shed. How could he ever know?

Due to her innate sense of secrecy there was a valley of misunderstanding between them, a valley that only she could bridge. She trusted him, yet could not confide in him, could not abolish the darkness that held them apart. Her tears were useless now. Her intrepid nature was gone. Hope had become nothing more than a dream, a dream that she would never forget. The past didn’t matter, it was over. For her, life was over though she tried to keep it going and destroy the barrier that cut her off from the outside world.

It had to be done alone, the job of finding her heart and soul, finding out what she lived for – for she did live for something. Everyone did, but most didn’t know, they just let it be. But not her. She was more than anyone could have imagined. Many threads tied her together and if one broke she was lost, lost to the love on which she thrived, lost forever in an eternal valley of darkness where only she was the lamp to light the way. Lost.

He would have appreciated her point of view and respected he opinion but she remained silent. There was only one thing left to say. ‘Goodbye’. It was said with tenderness but with a firmness that produced no argument.

He stood there, paralysed, as she gracefully swung her legs off the window ledge. There was a deathly silence which ended abruptly as she shattered on the terrace below.