Ｓｗｅｅｔ ａｎｄ Ｓｏｕｒ

Sour

Have you ever stood in one place so long that you no longer saw the people bumping into you or passing you snide comments? You no longer felt how heavy your legs felt mere seconds before, nor the tiered ache stinging the back of your eyes? You only felt the dull emptiness evading the place where your heart once was?

You can't breathe, the elephant weighing too heavily on your chest. Your jaw clenched tight, as a boa-constrictor around its last meal. In that moment you no longer thought about where your next meal would come from, as your stomach lurched at the thought of the previous night's dumpster scrapes. Nor did you think about finding an available shelter for the night, to hide away from the frost tipped December winds.

They said that the trauma will get better over time, but they don't know, no one does. Over time, the sour taste from the pain all those years ago creep up the back of your neck, chilling you to the core. No matter how hard you push the memories away they slam into you as a tank plows over an already wilted flower.

Standing there I no longer saw the boy with a fluffed green scarf, whose hands shivered as he held out the lone red Sour Patch kid. He had told me once before that he envied the candy. It was that although at first they were sour, causing your face to contort in bitterness, they soon turned sweet, relaxing and enjoying the sweetness. They were envied simply because our lives were the opposite. We were all once the sweet naïve children, who watched the snow fall waiting to go sled down the hill and throw snowballs. But now all we see is the sour snow that will delay work, and become muddied in the next days.

But the small amount of sweet you feel, as you see the love of your life.

Dark wisps of raven hair curled, hanging across dark thoughtful eye brows. Eyes the color of the deepest seas, hiding the most sacred secrets, locked away for no one to uncover. They flint across the page, holding onto each word as if they held the purest meaning of our very existence. An angled nose- not to big, nor to small- twinge with a sniff of the old dust coated books surrounding. A sharp jaw line dusted by light brown hairs, outlining thin pale lips pressed into a relaxed line. His muscled arm flexing ever so slightly as it turned the pages, soundless words dancing across his lips while reading the historically printed words.

A glittering flake caught my lifeless eyes; watching as it danced gracefully into my palm, before melting into iced hands. In that exact moment I knew my only hope, like the small, little snow flake, melted through leaving me empty.

He had promised a white Christmas Day, one that would show the purest of the ugliest life, but as I stood there cold and wet, watching the snow dance, I was alone. I had known I wouldn't see the old beaten, blue Chevy I came to love. I knew not even the purest of snow could make this life any less ugly. She knew the love of my life wouldn't appear next to me, trying to bring life back into my dead, lifeless eyes. But none of that stopped the hot tears that finally broke through the carefully constructed dam, allowing them to flow freely over pale cheeks.