A Moment In Time (Collection of Very Short Stories)

She woke up feeling a whirlwind of emotions from the day before. The sun rose that morning with a warmer, brighter light. The birds seemed to sing louder and even more beautifully. She could not get the thought of him driving away out of her mind. She lay there, not wanting the day to start yet so she closed her eyes to imagine him lying there with her.  The way he looked at her with those beautiful dark brown piercing eyes reached deep into her soul and her entire body would start tingling every time he smiled at her with those eyes. She imagined him lightly touching the small of her back with his fingertips while they laid their tangled together, content to just hold each other in the moment. He was like a beautiful storm on the great plains that mesmerizes you as you watch it from miles away while it approaches. Knowing full well that storms are dangerous, but you are still hypnotized by the power of nature to keep watching as the danger and beauty moves closer every second ready to unleash its fury. He was that danger and beauty. Everything about him stirred all the senses inside her back to life and ignited her heart to spin her world like a tornado leaving a path of vulnerable, emotional, beautiful debris. The years of clear skies she had created from a self-protection fantasy had her living comfortably in a basement convinced that love was not out there for her and that she was perfectly ok alone. She knew this moment changed everything. On this day with him, that safe fantasy was burned by an intense fire that he sparked inside of her that sent that old, tired story disappearing as embers floating back up into the universe to no longer exist. He lit every part of her world on fire with love, passion, and curiosity. What she did not expect to come was in a matter of 24 hours the danger and beauty that he embodied would have her heart opened to love with such fierceness it would rival the wrath of the gods themselves. But with only one blow of Poseidon’s trident, the earth would end up shaking just as fierce and her heart that had opened to love would crash with the intensity of a tsunami to shatter into a million tiny pieces at the same time. She would sit at the bottom of that newly formed crater from the impact with only her tears, barely breathing. She would have to find the strength and courage to love again. To not get swallowed up in her own pool of tears and drown in the vulnerability of loving someone to only risk a broken heart. For now, all she could do was sit defeated, rejected, hanging her head in the shallow water, with her arms wrapped around her knees clutching her hands together, knowing eventually she would have to pick up each jagged shard to put the puzzle of herself back together again. In her sadness, she felt shame and broke. But in her heart, she knew the truth, which seemed unattainable right now and with whatever strength she could muster, she knew in time, she would start taking those steps to help her remember she is whole, beautiful and there is nothing wrong with her. She would hold a piece of him in her heart forever as the man who broke through her barrier with danger, beauty, love, honesty, and passion and the man who also broke her heart at the same time as his heart could not love her without regret. She knew the only thing she could do was to wish him well and hope in time on his journey he would find a place in his heart to carry a piece of her that would find its way back to him after the storm.  That he would choose to grab onto that and love everything about her.  That through all of that vulnerable debris the moment they shared was as honest and pure as the sun shining after the storm and was right in every way. She lived without doubt or regret that for those 24 hours it was the most alive and most heartbreaking of her life.  There wasn’t a moment she would change, and she was nothing but grateful that the mix of danger and beauty and all that he embodied came into her life.

Art created by M.A. Schmid using the Midjourney web app.