a moment to process

I can't remember what she looked like on that day, only that she was beautiful.

I asked for a hug on that day, as she left - it seemed out of place, a grudging token of whatever flicker of feelings lay broken between us. I fought the urge to hold on for a moment longer, but it was too late - with a condescending pat on the back, she had let me know that it was time to let go, and so she stepped away towards the car.

In my memory her eyes were grey, as grey as the muted emotion I felt, as grey as the chilling winter clouds that swirled above us on that day. Her eyes always seemed to reflect the sky - in spring they danced with a lighthearted periwinkle, in summer a beautiful baby blue, all innocence and happiness. But in autumn they faded from brilliant silver to troubled ash grey, and now, in the winter... now, her eyes were as cool as steel, as silent as the sun.

Feeling all too sharply the cold bite of winter on my arms hanging awkwardly, I reached out again with a question. She rolled her eyes, and a smile came to her face, but it wasn't a smile that warmed any longer, colored with an edge of mockery. Of course, she had said, with the smile and the confidence of one long over the past.

I watched her go. It was quiet, save for the hard rhythm of my breathing, and for the soft rhythm of footsteps.

She pulled open the door, her legs swinging in graceful arcs before she disappeared behind inches of steel and plastic and glass that separated me from her, my gaze from her image. She was gone in moments, grey eyes and grey walls and grey clouds steadily pulling away, though I knew that it was more than simply distance that separated us.

Her smile lingered in my mind as I wandered back towards my empty house, but it was her voice that I remembered most clearly. A hint of derision in her smile, but in her voice I felt the opposite - I felt something small, something melancholy, something... grey. Just as small and melancholy and grey as I had felt for even asking the question, from her leaving like this as much as I had felt for watching her leave.

I wonder if it was real; if she had felt it too; if she had let out a broken sigh in the car with her mother as she wondered aloud if this was the way things were going to be from now on, if it was always going to be like this. I wonder now if she remembers that day as I did, or if our memories now are colored by the wounds we inflicted upon each other in the following months, or if she even remembers that day at all.

[and a bit closer]