Don’t they always?

Contributed by iansharman on 17/09/09

I started writing you a story,
Just the other day,
About the day I won your heart,
And it was going to say,
All the things I’d never said,
Or never said that way,
But before I finished writing it,
You took your heart away.

As they sat in the park together the sun made the highlights in her hair sparkle like a halo. His heart felt close to bursting as he held her in his harms, and she clung to him tightly as if he might disappear the moment she let him go. His hand gently caressed her perfect, soft cheek, and her soft lips met his. He looked deep into her eyes and saw his future in an instant, and there was no longer any doubt in his mind that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with this angel. And so he asked her to be his forever, and she said yes.
The rain lashed hard against his window as he awoke and the vision of perfection slipped from his mind. He had been torn from the most perfect summer’s day, back to reality; it had all been a dream. No…not a dream…it had been real, even though it felt like a dream, but then she had always seemed too good to be true to him. The summer had only been a few shorts weeks ago, but the dark, oppressive sky and heavy rain clearly attested to summer’s end, and the dull ache in his heart just confirmed it.
As he reached from his bed to turn off his alarm his eyes played across the collection of toys on the mantelpiece. He was in his thirties, why did he have toys? Was he so desperate to cling on to his long, forgotten youth? Perhaps it was time to grow up, and stop dreaming. Perhaps it was time to finally give up hope.
He dressed and washed and headed down to his studio to spend another day working, another day chasing a dream that no longer had any purpose. He’d given up on his dreams before; it wouldn’t be so hard to give up on them again. He could go back to an empty, hollow, meaningless life again. Why not? Isn’t that what everyone else did day after day after day? Living just to get drunk at the weekends, with the hope of occasional, meaningless sex with strangers to get him through the years. He felt his stomach turn, he’d never done that, and he didn’t really want to start now.
In his studio he was surrounded by little fragments of their life together, every one clawing at his heart, reminding him of what he’d lost. His mind rebelled and his chest ached as he felt the tears come once again. And then he saw it.
A small package sat on his desk. Despite being marked “fragile” it looked like it had been used as a football on the post room floor. He picked it up and carefully opened it, and inside he found his bruised and battered heart. Next to it sat a note which simply read “I’m sorry, I thought I wanted this, but I don’t, you can have it back.”
He fell to his knees and as he did so the package slipped from his hands. His broken heart hit the floor and shattered into a million tiny pieces.

Promises broken,
Just like my heart,
Lies told,
A heart stolen,
Or given away,
I’ll never be sure,
You said you loved me…

…don’t they always?