1:03 AM

4th Block, Composition
Picture Story, Revisited
03/09/07



She sat waiting for him, with her bags beside of her as she glanced for the millionth time that night at the clock overhead. It screamed down at her 1:03 AM…
He was and hour and three minutes late to meet her.
She pulled her legs to her chest as if to keep her heart from wrenching itself out of the cavity it beat itself dry in. Everything they could have been… everything they could have had… was gone. Her heart was gone because he was an hour and three minutes too late to keep it from leaving on the bus that they had been supposed to catch together.
Of course it had gone wrong, she angrily told herself. It had been predestined to go wrong from the start. He was been so wonderful about it, so beautiful and nearly earthreal. She could not even understand how he had ever fallen for someone as completely ordinary as herself. Well, now, apparently he had never really fallen for her. Had he truly loved her, he would have come to her at the time of their tryst. They would have left on the Midnight Express to New York City and started their lives together, away from this damned city, away from her family who refused to let her love him. Everything would have been okay, if only he had not left her stranded on a bench under streetlamp at 1:03 AM.

Less than five feet away from that same bench that a girl with her knees to her chest sat, a handsome boy sat alone in the shadows, his hat covering his eyes that were wet. He held his hands to his heart, trying to hold the shards together, because he loved her. He really, really loved her. In fact, he loved her so much that he refused to let her throw her family and friends, her job, her entire life away simply so he could have her all to himself.
So he sat alone, listening to her sobbing. He waited until she had left, defeated, to go back to her family who had not even realized she was gone.
Nothing would be okay. It could not be okay because he could not let her break herself because he could not bend. He would bend until she would not have to.
He was late… it was 1:03.