Not my favorite, but the only thing close to original (for a given value of original) that I've managed to write in for-fucking-ever. Inspired loosely by Taylor Swift's Love Story. Oh shoot me. I take what I can get, okay?
This is a...vignette? I'm incapable of writing long things.
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The Greatest Love of All Time
This is a love story, they tell you. It starts like this:
She’s crying.
Why is she crying? you ask. This is a love story. Shouldn’t she be happy and in love, flushed and breathless? Shouldn’t she laugh and smile and have a hand to hold, and a man who loves her to kiss? Shouldn’t she have promises of now and forever, until all her tears dry up?
This is what you’ve always hoped love would be like. You’ve never actually been in love, you think. There have been crushes, flutterings, butterflies in your stomach – but nothing quite so big, so monumental and momentous, as love.
You don’t know what it’s like. You’ve imagined it to be everything beautiful and splendid – a rush of feelings so intense that you won’t be able to contain them. You will shout to all the world, even silently, about love, love, love. Your eyes, your smile, your very pores will exclaim to everyone who passes you by: I’m in love. I am loved. This is love.
This is what you imagine love to be like, so you’re at a loss when the story begins:
She’s crying.
There’s no rain, no torrential downpour to match her mood, no light shower to gently streak her windowpanes like tears. It’s dark outside, though, because she’s wasted the entire day away in misery, pale and gray. Her hair is tied neatly behind her, her clothes immaculate – she made every effort to be okay this morning, so she could face the world and take it on. No one has to know, is what she thought that morning. I’ll be fine.
It’s all fallen apart, and now she sits immaculate on her bed, crying. She feels like she’s choking on her heart, feels like it’s risen up in her throat until she can’t breathe, and aches all over.
You want to reach out to her, maybe hold her. You’re tentative though, because you don’t know her. You don’t what’s wrong. What happened, you want to ask, but there is no answer. What brought her to this point?
How is this a love story? you wonder again.
Maybe her boyfriend (husband?) left her. Maybe he cheated on her – but, no. You think she’d be angrier if it were that. She seems too heartbroken. Maybe he died.
She seems young, so her boyfriend (lover?) must be young as well.
How tragic it would be to die so young. You would cry, too. (At least you think you would. It’s hard to judge, when you’ve never been in love.)
She wipes at her eyes, and you can read the weariness in the slow movements of her hand. She’s tired. Tired of crying, tired of feeling like the world has broken her. It’s easy to see, and it leaves you conflicted. Is there anything you can do to help her? Is there anything you might say to console her? Are there such things as the right words?
You wish you knew what was wrong.
Someone enters the room, an older woman. She gathers the girl in her arms, holds her close, and speaks quiet words into her ear. When she leaves, your protagonist lifts her chin. She looks suddenly determined, more certain of what she wants, like she has purpose. Her face is still streaked with tears, wet lashes dark in the fading light.
She moves with purpose. Something is clutched tight in her hands – a small vial. She is uncapping it. You don’t understand. You don’t understand how this is a love story, if she is alone and unhappy. You don’t understand why she is lifting the vial to her lips, draining it with an elegant tilt of her neck.
She’s beautiful, you think. She’s young. She reminds you of someone you know, someone you want to protect and keep from the toils and wiles of the world. You hardly know her, but suddenly you are desperate for her to be happy, to live freely and laugh joyously. You want her to love, to shout it to the world to know, and fear clutches you when she swallows that last drop.
The vial falls to the ground.
She follows soon after, an inelegant collapse onto the floor, her immaculate clothing at last disheveled. Her face is pale, still damp with tearstains.
This is a love story, they tell you. You feel like a stone has settled into your heart.
How can this be a love story? How can this be anything like love, this story that makes you want to gather her up and cry into her hair? She is so young, so sad. You don’t understand. This is nothing like fireworks or moving mountains or birdsong. This is nothing like love.
You turn away as an outcry is raised, and rushing feet fill the room, crowding carelessly near her body.
This is a love story, they tell you. It ends like this:
He finds her and his cry raises goosebumps along your skin. It’s chilling, the anguish in his voice; it breaks him. He lands on his knees, pulling her towards him ever so gently. He sobs, laments. He kisses her one last time, murmurs prayers into her hair, despairing.
So this is he. This is her man. (Boyfriend? Lover?) This is her heart, her love.
Her love cannot exist with her. You realize this before he does. You’re almost calm when he pulls out a vial. This is familiar, too terrifyingly familiar. You almost don’t flinch when he drains the poison and the vial clatters to the ground as he slumps over.
So this is love.
So this is love.
But then she stirs. And then she screams, because no, no, no, she never meant for it to end like this. It was supposed to be different. He was supposed to understand. He was supposed to wait. She only ever wanted to be with him, only wanted him, only wanted—
She wails, and you know what happens next.
Everyone knows what happens next.
She grabs the dagger and plunges it into her own heart.
She’s crying.
You look away as she collapses onto him, star-crossed lovers thwarted even at the end. They’ll have eternity, but will forever be long enough? He didn’t understand. She didn’t wait. They were in love.
This is a love story, they tell you. The greatest love story of all time.
Maybe, you think, you’ve never understood what love is about all this time.
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