This is my entry for Poetigress' Jan 22, 2009 thursday prompt of "by the fire"

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Hello Melody,



It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Almost seven years since that step into the new city of Zapata.
We were both scared, but you, always the adventurous one, thought of it as a new horizon, a grand party where everyone was invited and no one forgotten.

The move wasn’t hard on you. The small apartment with its foiled windows and locks on the outside of guest room doors didn’t faze you one bit. Not even when I said I saw something strange and dark in the bedroom did you bat an eye (although an eye was exactly what I saw). I still wonder what door we opened in apartment number six of that desert town on the edge of wasteland and paradise.

However, I do remember how I met you. You were so cute. You bounced around in glee when I spotted you on the gymnastics mat, dressed in a dinosaur costume. You giggled in joy when I wrote my first love poem to a girl and gave it to her along with a bouquet of flowers and a card complete with dragon illustrations. You were there at every small moment when I felt that life was truly special. As long as I was with you, nothing else mattered.

I’d like to thank you, because it was you who urged me to make the move to Zapata. Treasure was hidden in those sands were people used kind words and small gestures to create a world that never existed before and never will again.

I wanted to honor you because I realized how much we needed each other.

I was there when someone stabbed you in the back and left your heart a ruined mess. I saw the whole thing and felt sadness coarse through my veins at the mere thought of your pain. I saw how your eyes faded, even though we managed to patch up the wound. I am sorry I didn’t see it before. I regret it everyday, knowing there must have been a way to prevent such a horrible tragedy.

You cried. And cried. and cried. A torrent of waterfalls flooding the desert with your torment and sorrow. I tried to hold you close, but you slowly fell away. I tried to keep you safe, but your body melted along with your tears in the searing fires of that dry savannah.

I was alone.

I was alone, and angry, and furious at a world that could not, would not accept your beauty. Your heart was unmatched and no one has ever come close to your heights of happiness or your depths of despair.

I looked in the mirror yesterday and realized you weren’t there anymore. All that was left was a sad, sad boy with eyes of half-light and a heart made into a vault with a password long forgotten.

That vault is closed and quiet now, except for the days when I think I hear scratching on the walls. I look, only to see the same bars, the same hard steel exterior with those locks on the outside. I’m afraid to see what lies inside. Afraid to see if you’re still the one from all those years ago, because if you haven’t changed, then what has become of me?

The vault is closed.

But at what cost?

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