History Lesson.

This is an awesome story I read while at an English Seminar at ECU.

Past the same school window, each morning. I watched her float by.

She hurried within the scaffold of walking; she flew and hurriedly flurried and threw herself about in a flustered rush, but never quite moved quickly. Her eyes were wide, lips tight and paling with the cold, scarf folded carefully around her neck, draping, dripping down her breast.

I had been behind that same window almost every day throughout the years, amongst the other things, that we had shared. Whether those things be upon paper, or card, through touch or gesture, we took pleasure in sending messages to one another, in the ways others often neglected.

We happily dwelled smilingly within emotional institutions that children didn't often embrace in these times.
We wrote each other letters and practised poetry.
We penned and scrawled each other sometimes awful drawings.
We lived in an empire of paint, pencil, scissors, and card.

Whatever was at hand we had the means to give life. Give whatever we like, life.
With our ideas, with out mental glue and staples, we made things draw victorious breath.
We smashed so many things together, melted and stuck so many things that we lost track of what we were trying to convey in favour of the thrilling conveyance.

We were oh so extravagant. Trying to sort out our heads, cut out and colour our brains and paste glitter upon our throbbing stomachs; running to glue our hearts onto each other.

We had History alongside each other. The desks were small, our shoulders brushed as we wrote.

One day a note came, pushed across, under her fingers.

I never did quite understand us.

I never did.

But I know;

that I never quite enjoy myself as I should,

when you aren't with me.

I don't think I love you.

I don't think I do.

I've always been very alone.

I've never been loved either...

All I can say is that every time the phone rings I shiver to think it may possibly be you.

I looked at her for a small while, and she stared at me. We looked down and then both continued to write. We never verbalised what that particular note really meant to both of us amongst all others. History had never really seemed to offer any answers.

Our History teacher Mr. Henry once commented in front of the class that he saw himself, he and his wife, within both of us. Nobody had ever known why. The others had laughed, but we wished he had expanded, told us what he had seen, what he had meant. What had he seen in us?

He was old, his eyes were wide, wet, and his head was tipped back, his mouth slightly open in deep reminiscence.
His wife had died many years ago. Everybody knew. He had since gone a long way away from here.
He adjusted his brown jacket, giving it a tug and a straighten. He had approached me and rubbed my head softly, tears dripping down his face, his body rapturous with the sharp reverberation of practised, well hidden, sobs. He rubbed my head and walked out of the room, holding the thick black frames of his glasses.

I decided to follow him out.

She stood and came too.