Strings: A Collection of Crescendos

"Triumph"

The last time I saw him, it was raining.
He squinted at me, catching a glimpse between raindrops. I dare not wipe the rain from my face, he may think them tears.
We promised each other no weeping, just goodbye. For a moment we stood there, out in that cold, damp field, exchanging silent "I love you"s, but moments can only hold so much hope before they are gone.

"So this is it, then?" I ask. Thunder breaks in the distance, low and ravenous.
He says nothing but nods, shaking the water loose from the edges of his cap.
The cold rain soaks through my dress, it clings to me like a second skin. How the seconds turned to minutes, the minutes to hours, the hours to the lifetime we would have spent together. I see him now as he's always been, not a uniform, not a rank but a boy— the boy who chased me through the valley just to ask me my name, the boy with the raven black hair in the moonlight and the warm hazel locks in the summer sun. That is how I wish him always to stay.
But now, that mess of hair is cut and drawn up in his officer's cap. The warm chest I clung to on many a cold winter's night is now buttoned up and adorned with brass. If he were to return, I would make of myself another adornment across his chest, my arms stretched out in victory, the greatest triumph of the solider who came back, and all the ones that didn't.

He moves toward me.
"Don't." I say. Hot tears mingle with cold rain.
I can't hold him now, so close to goodbye...
He turns from me and slowly makes his way through the tall grass, as if waiting for me to call his name, to run to him and embrace him— but I don't. I don't run to him and embrace him, because embracing him means having to let go and that is one thing I could never do.

~

Inspired by 2 Aquarelles: No. 1. Lento ma non troppo by Frederick Delius