Unloved

by Katy Regnery

I long for someone. In my loneliest moments, I long for someone so fiercely, it aches. I want someone to hold me, to whisper in my ear, to braid their fingers through mine and breathe against my skin. I want to know love again. In fact, I actively yearn for it, though I can’t actually imagine accepting it.

I wish I was the sun so I could shine down on her, so I could examine every peak and valley of her face until I have it memorized and can recall it at any lonesome moment: the sad, beautiful, green-eyed girl from the forest.

Brynn, sighs my heart.

his left eye is green and his right eye is blue. “Your eyes . . .,” I murmur. “It’s heterochromia,” he says, blinking self-consciously. His lips flinch slightly, like he wants to smile but doesn’t. “Weird, but not contagious.”

I didn’t realize until now that people can laugh and cry at the same time.

There is such profound relief in being understood—in finally being known in the inexplicable way that can come only from empathy, from one broken person fathoming the grief of another.

The minutes I’ve spent with her are the greatest gift my quiet life has ever known.

Is it okay to want to sit next to a pretty girl in the dark and watch a movie?

“Don’t you have any good stories to tell me?” Good stories? No. Not many, sweet Brynn.

I love her. I will love her until the sky falls. Until the sun and moon fail to rise. Until Katahdin crumbles. I will love her forever.

When she smiles, even I, damned from my very conception, cursed from the cradle, feel my heart soar. That’s how it is with angels, I’m learning. I bet the devil couldn’t stay away if he tried.

Her bare feet crackle softly on the hay that covers the hard wooden floor of the barn, and I am drawn even to them, in love with them, jealous of them, hating them a little because they will take her away from me.

“You are . . .,” he murmurs breathily, moving his hips up experimentally as his tongue darts out to wet his lips, “the greatest . . . treasure . . . of my entire life.”