"Fifteen minutes. Can you do it?"

He mumbled to me, as he slid over a shot of whiskey.

I checked the clock and downed the shot as the minute hand swung past 9.

"I guess we'll find out"

I was wearing a conservative black dress that day. He said discretion was always loudest at the train station, so it would not do. And he was right. No one was dressed for comfort, and everyone made noise. I could barely hear myself over the bustling caravan of commuters and their loud-as-gunshot shoes.

I came to the clearing and waited for a call on the phone he gave me, just as he'd told me to do. The clock hit 10, and still no ring. I contemplated walking back. But no, that would be too dangerous. I had to stay and wait. Finally, it rang.

"Hello"

A strange voice said, "Listen to me, this is very important. Your life depends upon it. The package is at the front desk of the building directly behind you. Tell them it's for your boyfriend. You have 9 minutes. Hurry"

"What package? who is-"

It went to dial tone before I could finish.

I turned around and began to walk quickly. I was afraid that i was being led into a trap, but i trusted what he said, and ran to the next building.

I bursted into the building with the look of urgency, begging them for the package. Then I realized why everyone was gawking at me. The building was a post office. 

When I got back to the pub, my boyfriend was laughing with the bartender.

"This funny to you?", I tried to say with a straight face.

"Oh, you have no idea."

"I hope this package was worth this silly game of yours"

He struggled to stop laughing.

"Oh lighten up. You keep telling me you want to feel like you're doing something important, so I thought I'd give it to you. It's your fifteen minutes of fame"
"I was hoping my fifteen minutes would turn out to have a little less running than that. What's in this package anyway?"

"Well, Open it up"

Still frazzled, I opened it up and found a ring box. 

Beauty makes you Fragile

"I am whole", so says the part
"for I alone have end and start."

And all of them so scattered in static
cling to their indivisible selves
like your smile in my rearview mirror.

You found my wholeness in the ocean of my parts.
I swam toward your beauty and you froze me in time,

But over time, you became brittle.
The cracks in us were widening

Until you broke loose and broke our hearts
and my self was once again scattered parts.

And in the end, I finally see.
If not for you, I'd still be me.

Beauty is a Fragile Gift

What is beautiful is vulnerable.
The beauty of vulnerability grants protection.

What is beautiful beckons with a silent boast,

Is loud in a graceful way.

It isn't like Beauty to be one with the whole. 

She knows that her truest form is in her scarcity. 

Her brilliance where brilliance cannot be found.

And she remembers when she was invisible, undetectable, underground.

She remembers the time it took for her confidence to grow,

The busybodies who took a glance, and didn't cut her down.

It is the very shell she used to hide in that feeds her spirit everyday.

What is beautiful knows when it's time to bloom.

It's been six years since I last set foot here. Five since I've missed it. It's hard to remember sometimes, what your hands felt like. The ripples of time start to bleed together after a while. I can't quite remember which alternate universe it was where things turned out okay.

But I do know that everything seems so much further now. Each stride is heavier, each goal is more difficult to reach. So before I leave this place for the last time, I need you to understand something.

I hate you.

In time, in space.
In mem'ries of place.
This beautiful now
concedes with grace.

Nothing will last
that lives in the past
But the ghosts and the voices
whose lines you cast.

A fearful mind will leap into a lover's arms and take the innocent figure of the child that lurks inside. It will put off thinking, feeling, living, for the evasion it finds in play.

When fearing people love fearing people, it is the fear that acts between them, the fear that does the loving. And the fear that does the fighting, the questioning, the hiding and the lying. Until love becomes malevolent game - a war you can't retreat from.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. For fear is enough to be afraid of.

I can almost see you. Faded, but the colors remain. Muffled, but all the meaning you meant to give me is still living there in the stone, the moss.

And in the shadows you weep, but not quietly. The shadows here are loudest when these human eyes are empty, gasping for the daylight they left at the door.

What I remember of you lies in the fields between where we watched each other. The blossoms in the spring, the leaves in the fall. And your eyes in fixation as Polaris in the sky.