Wait for Me

by Tia Louise

I guess sometimes love makes you forget things can get better. I guess he didn’t see a bend in the road up ahead. I guess he only saw a straight line leading deeper and deeper into black.

Dolly says love is like a butterfly, soft and gentle as a sigh, but from what I’ve seen of love, I think it’s more like a tornado, shocking and violent and so powerful it can rip your soul out of your mouth… It’s faster than you can run, and it blows one house away while leaving the next one peacefully standing.

I didn’t know which way love would take me, quietly or with the roar of a freight train. I should’ve known. I should’ve realized the moment I saw him. It was both. It was quiet as the brush of peach fuzz, but it left my insides in splinters. It twisted my lungs and lifted me up so high only to throw me down with a force that rang my ears and flooded my eyes.

He smiles like he knows something I don’t.

She looks at me like she feels the same way I do… like we’ve found something special. Like I’m the best thing she’s ever seen. Like the world has shifted and everything’s different.

“You didn’t ask me to wait for you.” My voice is quiet, and our gazes mingle in a swirl of longing and sadness and reality hitting us in the face.

Heaven is finding the thing you can’t live without and being able to hold it. Hell is knowing you’ll have to let it go.

wish the best things in my life didn’t always seem to end. I wish our love would last. Lifting my chin, I meet his earnest gaze. The lights flicker in his eyes like a million promises we have yet to make.

His scent surrounds me, and it all comes flooding back. All the nights we spent hanging on each other’s voices, living for just the sight and sound of each other like oxygen. All the times I lay in my bed, memorizing his face through the flickering screen. All the teasing and flirting, all the wishes and promises.

Inside my chest, the path of destruction is miles wide, splintered throughout, written in his hand, with his words. I can’t feel my heart beat. I only feel sharp stabs of broken wreckage. A wasteland where my dreams once grew green and thriving. Empty. Ravaged and torn.

The sun still rises, shining through my windows as if I don’t exist, as if the world has forgotten what once flowered here. I’m left to fade away like a house covered in vines and shadows, better things to think about, happier things to see. Inside is silence.

What is left when you lose something so precious? Something irreplaceable?

That morning we’d driven together, I’d wondered if he’d ever even looked at the beauty around him. Maybe he didn’t then, but he does now.

“Remember it’s the darkest nights that produce the brightest stars. If he’s showing you his true colors, believe him.”

“Sawyer said sometimes good people get hit hard. We have to forgive them because we never know when it might be our turn to need forgiveness.”

think about our future and the road ahead. I know it won’t be without its bumps and valleys, but after all we’ve been through, I’m confident we can face whatever challenges might come.

I’ve learned love is a tornado, destructive and fierce and powerful. It’s also a butterfly, soft, gentle, beautiful. But to get to the butterfly, you must go through the tornado. Love has to change you. You have to grow, and it’s difficult and life-altering and scary and lonely… but coming out on the other side, we’ve spread our wings.

Family doesn’t stop going just because you can’t see it. Family is something that is unbreakable, forever. It’s in the trees, stretching up to the heavens. It’s tradition and laughter and love. My final thanks is to them. We’re starting a new family, and this family isn’t afraid of the tornado. This family can fly.