The Silence Choked Us

The lake was beautiful.

An air of death and stifled regrets hung around the playhouse, scrawled with brightly colored chalk messages of high school crushes. The fleeting sun blinded me as I stepped inside, taken aback by the musty scent of age that should never accompany the haunt of a young girl.

He was solemn as he showed me her favorite stuffed bear and her small handprint on a circular plate of porcelain.

I was silent as he haltingly walked around the width of the tiny structure, pacing nervously as if he expected her to come bounding in any moment. She was a light to him, extinguished far too soon.
We finally ducked our heads and stepped outside, and I breathed a sigh of release, glad to be free of such a constricting memory. His sadness was palpable, and I smoothed my fingertips over the creases of worry cutting across his forehead.

The lake was hers, and I felt like an intruder. He clasped my hand as we walked around past the marshes and whistling cattails, and I could not speak, for words did not seem wise.

The sun had melted into the horizon, leaving the dense settling of twilight on our shoulders. The royal hues of purple seemed fit for the princess she was, and the rosy tinge of red on the horizon was a mirror image of the flush that crept across my cheeks each time I saw him.

The spindly branches of a bare birch tree stretched to the sky against the deep sky, and a tantalizing sliver of the haunting moon shone brightly to the left.

He tried to verbalize pent up feelings, but the silence choked us, leaving us sitting in the dew-damp grass, counting our thoughts as the luminous moon rose above the line sketch of the tree, now consumed by the dark.

As we rose, our feet left prints in the shimmering grass as we left the silvery lake behind.

Her whispers in his ear broke his silence, and I was left with my hand still around my neck, choking all words of comfort.