It was between autumn;
a story like those in fairytales, written in cursive.
One, when you take in the new book smell and then leave it closed,
smells like a mix of paper with a sprinkle of sugar and a pinch of salt.

It started with the fluttery pink feelings,
those that everyone feels, coursing through their veins;
lyrics mumbling out of her lips along with the a track playing from afar,
and the fireflies spreading powders of the sun to the air. 

But she knew that eventually,
her eyes started to give it all away,
that they were not the same anymore,
just like seeing his eyes - the same, blue, but now livid- teared her up inside.

And by the end, she lay,
listening to her fractured heart beat against the cold floor,
forgetting that she, like always, was destined to be a phantom as long as he breathes,
suffocating under the vacant shell of what it means to be a girl. 

It started with imagined tales of love, forming beautiful drawings of their relationship,
Until the pencil sketches were erased and replaced with marks of a red pen,
Of man and woman, of boy and girl.
Yet, even so, her imagination fails to picture him as a stranger from the past.
And the buried ties, which she tries so hard to hide, 
resurface every so often, waving hello.

I start shivering. But it’s not even cold.
We are all under winter’s spell,
the veiled corners are our world shine today under the nighttime trance,
And I realize, for the light to shine, the greater the shadow needs to be.