Wednesday 3 December 2008

From a beautiful balcony



From a beautiful balcony she saw the world. It was a world of constant blossom and energy; the kinetics of motion seemingly drawing a performance of life on and on before her lookout post.
She, Sarah, was a tender girl of 20 years; soft of face and lustrous of hair. Her young love, Theo, was the reason she watched out so much.
On the days she knew they would meet, she spent at least an hour before his arrival looking down upon the speeding world. This panoply of colour and sound would bring such a delighted smile to her mouth that she would often start to tremble with sheer joy, or perhaps shed a little tear for the world and all the beautiful things it had to show her. Even on the days it rained, she was happy by the teeming water tapping at her window.
When he eventually came (always five minutes early) she would see his black head bobbing along the street from quite a distance. Immediately her heart rate would increase and she might feel a little bit sick, but she would take a deep breath and follow his progress with her eyes.
When he got near to her balcony he would always look up to see her, but she was able to time this to perfection and always rolled away and around, back into the living room, to keep him waiting for his glimpse of her, to heighten the anticipation of their imminent embrace and kiss.
There was one day, just one day, when she looked out for him, looked out long and hard and she couldn’t see him. Her eyes flicked like a hungry tongue around the street, crossing to the other side and then back again. She felt sick, she was trembling, her eyes were tearful, but no sign of him. ‘He must just be running late,’ she told herself over and over. ‘He’s okay’.
But when the time came when she would usually twirl around away from the window, she simply fell to the floor, covered herself in her dress and wept. Not for long, though. It dawned on her that her Theo might be in trouble, somewhere near by. She must look for him, at least. She must do that.
And running down the stairs, without stopping to take a coat or change her shoes, she flung open the double doors of the house and then stopped dead. There, upon the first step, was a bouquet of delicate white roses, and smiling next to them was her love.
She stepped over the flowers, then, and threw herself into Theo’s arms, weeping some more and kissing his face, almost falling from the weight of the contrasting feelings she had been subject to these last minutes.
But he held her up and kissed her eyes, and found that he was weeping too.

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