Maybe that's what I see now. Abandoned everything. the birds that fly alone, the trees that spring nothing but broken branches--their leaves toasting into crisp pieces of fried paper. I can smell the smoke they give off as the sun gently cooks their green edges until they turn golden with the burn, and finally collapse and float, tossing their bodies into the wind. I feel like those leaves, because I too gave into something that was stronger than my passion, my love, and my soul, feverish with the hardships of love.
         I remember the trees from my old childhood down the street. Shady, but massive trunks that I climbed just so I could reach the top and look upon the houses below. My friends used to scury out into the street and look up at me, laughing as we clucked and screeched bird calls to each other. The birds would answer, and we'd laugh, somehow satisfied at our meek imitations of their language. I imagined we were saying "hello, how are you" as we squacked in a roll of calls that we will never understand.
         He never understood me, did he?
         My tree, my gentle one, my strong limb, my branch across the ocean, why did he leave so soon? I remember the days we used to sit, hand in hand, soul in sight, just staring at the ocean, and feeling the sea spray us as it tumbled over the pebbles of sand. I would be drawn into the deepness of his eyes, and swim laps in the water that never froze--the moments lasting longer than moments, and the seconds finally lasting longer than I ever thought seconds could last. His lips would part gently and I would finger them, caressing and loving everything about him. All he gave me was a look back in return, a chance for me to quench my thirst in his eyes, and then he would kiss me--tenderly brushing the hair that clutched my flushed cheeks.
         He emptied me with a single word, and filled me up again with another. I was practically drinking the air from his hand, thirst with a thirst that was never quenched. When he left me alone, and all I had was the murky mist of night, all I saw was him. I wished, and wondered, if all he saw was me, but the way he looked with his deep eyes and touched his hands to my face, I knew he never saw me. He must have had some spark to make his hands touch my cheek the way he did, but I never saw it in the way I hand my heart to him. Taken from my very chest. My every movement was accustomed to his, made for him, fixed for his liking, and all I got in return was a fleeting moment of a love I could never grasp.
         It broke my heart, he saw it did. The moment he first held my hand to the last day he kissed me, he knew it was doomed. He was trying so hard to love me, I could sense it. Taste it in his kiss. Feel it in his grip.
         Where did he travel to? I miss seeing the strength of him, the way I saw the edgy lines of his muscles when he folded his arms over his chest defiantly when we argued. His voice would rise so loud, I swear the windows shook with the thunder of the storm that lay deep in the pit of his gut, but his words never melted through my skin. They seemed to drift, looking for a way in above the surface, and then finally coming to rest in the soils of the ground. Whatever he had been angry about was never brought up again. Simply ignored as if nothing had happened, and that I hadn't noticed his teeth clench while I fought back--the words rolling in his mouth, aching to be released but never being said.
         He never let me know, did he?
         How much pain can one person cause? i ask and ask and it has never been answered. He seems to have forgotten that the wings he gave me were clipped when he said that very last whisper. The last time I realised I would feel the tender linger of his touch. I have never forgotten the moment when he let go of my hands, a defeated look resigning in his eyes, and then that familular look of pity. I will never forget that the first person that I had truly, and madly fallen for had felt sorry for me. He knew he shattered me, bruised my very being, and he knew he was going to be over me the very moment he left my doorstep that day.
         How many branches has he cut from my limbs? How many eyes has he turned blind? I gave until my heart could no longer give. I would send all my thoughts, my mind, my soul, just to see him again. Just to hear his voice sound in my mind like one last ecstasy to dream. The memories of him linger as if these moments are still fresh in my memory. His black hair, his aubron eyes. . . The only exchange I got for giving him my heart.