By NATALIE SACKET
Staff Writer
Editor’s Note: The following short story is an orginal work from a student-written novella. Any ideas, tones, or expressions depicted in this work are purely for enterainment purposes only and are not held by the Northwestern News.
You might ask: how did she know she was in love?
Altthough she had not felt it growing within her, she knew now that it existed, her love for him would never grow old. It would be eternal in its vivaciousness. She was certain if she were to die, she would certainly keep loving him beyond the grave, past the next realm, beyond anything that one could comprehend. She would love him until her last breath, and then beyond. Their love would last longer than the stars. No celestial realms could comprehend or replicate this feeling The oceans would shrivel into the nothingness. The ages would pass on. The mountains would crumble into pebbles. The rivers would shrink into mere veins pattering the earth. The zombie apocalypse would have come and gone. Her love for him would pass their patterned love tale on to worlds beyond their long-deceased earth.
Compared to the beauty of their love, palaces appeared as simple huts. Chandeliers were mere matches. Mountains of gold were a few simple coins lost in the cracks of the forgotten world. Perfume was the stench of a thousand corpses.
She loved him because of who he was. It was his faults she seemed to love the most… The crack in his chin… The birthmark on his arm… His inability to put his thoughts into words… The scar on his forehead… His lack of rhythm… The way he chattered his teeth when he slept… He always feared she would cease loving him because of these flaws, but what do flaws matter when it comes to the heart? It wants what it wants. We love what we love. Reason has no right to be involved in matters of the heart. Isn’t it unwise love that is always the most passionate? To love another’s flaws is the purest form of love. That ability to recognize, accept, and even love another for what appears to the world as unlovable is rare and perfect and pure.
Her heart was like a fresh patch of snow, untouched. He was slowly treading pathways across her soul, causing all he touched to thaw. She knew that if he were to leave, her heart would once again freeze, this time capturing the chaos of the indentions he left behind.
She realized that his skin would one day be calloused and covered in the trails of protruding veins, no matter how often it was pressed against hers. She knew that his knuckles would one day be knotted and pained when clasping hers. She knew that his face would droop, no matter how much she stroked his cheek. She knew all this, and yet she cursed the thought that she might not be with him when this day would come.
With him, she felt steady, the emptiness purged from her soul. With him, she felt a floating, a slightly unreal sensation impossible in the dimensions holding her back. It was a power one could only feel in dreams. Then again, she had found a love possessed only in dreams.
This is how she knew she was in love.