You vowed never to leave me, and I believed you. 

I go back there sometimes, to the place you left me. The trees are taller, but the rest remains the same. The only element missing is you. 

Do you remember back then? Back when you made promises in the grass as we watched the dandelions sprout. Yellow for now. White later. 

It doesn’t matter how many times I walk the path our feet made; the same scene replays in my mind. It used to be my favorite home movie; now, it’s nothing more than a nightmare that time can’t weaken. 

I can still hear the gravel crunching under my sandals. I turned so hard that it left streaks in the rocks. There wasn’t time to worry about giving our location away.

I ran to you, ignoring the unlevel ground as I passed through the damp soil under the trees. The world changed the moment I broke through the tree line. It was a whole new world where we were safe, where we could be together. 

You’d be waiting in the clearing, a cigarette dangling from your lips like the poster child for the bad boy. I knew your secret; you hated the taste, but it angered your parents, so you refused to stop. 

So sinfully beautiful in all the worst ways. 

I still dream about the way your arms wrapped around me. What about you? Do you think about me? 

There are days when I hope you do and others when I pray you don’t. 

I don’t know which today falls under. 

I can still see myself pushing up the fabric of your flannel shirt. Ugly bruises, the darkest shade of purple, raining down your side. They were why I had run to see you, ignoring that voice in my head telling me to wait until it was safe. Everyone at Sunny Point had heard your dad the night before. That man’s voice was like a cannon. It’s one of the few things I’ll never forget about him. 

I’ll never understand how a man could hate his own blood so much. I know your mom made excuses for him, but I hope you know that you never deserved that kind of pain. No child does. 

What really bothers me is that you were always there, waiting just outside my window, when I fought with my parents, but you never let me do the same for you. You wanted to hide your pain like it would save me somehow. 

It didn’t. 

Sorry.

That day, you promised me we’d leave soon. All you needed was to save up a little more money. That was always your excuse to stay. You didn’t want us to suffer on our own, completely disregarding the fact that we were already suffering. 

For some reason, I believed you. How often did I believe you when you looked me in the eye and lied? 

Too many.

Was it all a lie? I don’t want the answer to that. It just might kill me to know. 

What I tell myself is that you had no choice. I say it so much that I almost believe the lie. But you could have left with me that day. We would have struggled, but we would have been together. How was that not a better ending to the story than what you gave us? 

When you lay down next to me that day, unable to hide the wince when your back hit the hard, unforgiving ground, why did you make your choice? 

Again, I don’t want to know. 

All I want is to forget that you ever promised me forever. 

Before you walked into my life, stupid smirk and messy hair, I’d been content with the garbage I’d been handed. Some cycles are never broken. I was content with that.  

Why did you have to feed me fairy tales? The pretty pictures you created in my head. Us all grown, happy, with a real house and a dog, going to work in places that pay you with paper checks. I wanted it all. Because of you, I wanted to matter. 

I wanted love. 

Only yours. 

Yours came with a price, and I was willing to pay. For you, I was going to slip on my best runners, toss my life into a duffel bag, and go. 

I can almost laugh about it now. 

How were two kids with nothing going to ever be something? I see that now. I didn’t back then. Seeing anything besides the golden shine you added to everything was impossible. It blinded me. Changed me. 

Sometimes I hate you for that. 

A part of me will live forever in that clearing, surrounded by dandelions and broken promises. I try to see past my pain and remember all that lived out here. It had been as extraordinary as it was temporary. 

That’s all we ever were.

Temporary. 

Dandelions are trying to last the season. 

I never knew that would be the last time I curled up next to you, listening to you paint a lovely picture of a future we’d never have. I would have memorized you better. 

We parted ways that day with a kiss and a promise to meet in two days. You said you had a plan but wouldn’t tell me the details.  

And it never mattered. 

Because you left me that night. The one that’s seared into my mind forever.

Mom forgot the milk in the au gratin potatoes, and I commented on how hard it must be to follow directions on a box. My dad got mad, and we screamed at each other, saying all sorts of hurtful things that no longer hurt. Sirens came, and my mom yelled at me, thinking I called the cops.

My dad threw open the little door to our trailer, bursting through with a plan of talking himself out of trouble, but the cars weren’t there. 

The sirens weren’t for us. 

They were for you. 

The lights danced, and the crowd grew. Every resident was outside, gathering around your trailer, fighting for space, blocking my view. 

A blessing and a curse. 

You should have been on a bus somewhere with me, chasing points on a map and cracking jokes. Instead, you became another statistic. The victim of your father’s hate. 

And you broke your promise to me. 

I was ready to take on the world with you. I wasn’t prepared to stand beside a pile of dirt to talk to you. Practiced wedding vows in my head became a goodbye to a box underground. 

That was our ending. 

Your mom wouldn’t let me come to the service. She said it was my fault. I hated her for a long time, but I let that go. I see now that she was just heartbroken. She lost everything in one moment, and I was a safe target. I wrote her a letter, but didn’t know where to send it, so I put it in a box just in case. 

My anger still lingers, no matter how many letters I write. This one isn’t going to heal me, nor will the next. I’m trying, though, not for you but for me. 

Time has done nothing to heal me. The scabs are still there. I pick at them when I’m alone, keeping the scar tissue from forming. 

You were supposed to be it for me. Luke and Ava. A tree in the woods holds our names hostage, a gravestone in nature. I never look for it, too afraid of what will happen to the ribbons left of my heart if I see your hasty work. You poked yourself with the tip of that pocket knife right before you carved our names into the bark. 

Why does everything have to remind me of you? 

Trees. Dandelions. The sky. Smiles. Dreams. Hope. 

You’re everywhere I look. Or maybe I’m still searching for traces of you. 

I’m never sure how to end these things, which is silly because no one else will ever read them. It’ll join the others in the box, along with the rock you gave me because it was the color of my nail polish the first time you saw me. In my will, I asked to be buried with it because it holds everything I have that reminds me of you. 

I wish you had picked us. Maybe it would have saved you, or perhaps it would have doomed us both. I don’t know, and I never will. 

All I know is that I’ll never believe anyone else when they say they’ll stay. 

I believed the lie once. 

And I’ve never recovered.