Cadeau

-She sits trembling, her heart swells. To etch love into paper, she tries. The pen pressed into the 4×5 canvas in front of her. A card. She likes cards. She bought him a card. It made her smile when she bought it, thinking of him. Writing in it, makes her heart ache. Tears fall, as her heart swells and her pen trembles, along with the rest of her. She breathes deeply and heavily. There’s an emotion, now alive inside, she’s never felt before. And as she writes, she writes it down as, Love. She smiles, as the tears fall; it’s that kind of emotion.
She knows him, knows him well, perhaps better than anyone else, except maybe himself. Yet she’s unaware of what this card will mean to him. Though she’s certain, it will mean something. Perhaps, it’ll remind him of her tears. Of the night she cried on his shoulder. Of the words they shared, then. Or maybe, he won’t understand, even after she’s gone and he’ll reread it year after year. Maybe, only after the years have gone by, will he see it clearly, and maybe then, then he’ll cry. She doesn’t know, but she writes anyways. She pours her heart into it, even as her tears run down her cheek. The smile lingers, she can’t help it; she’s addressing it to him.
She gets up and stares out the window. The sun’s collapsed. These are the moments. She feels safer now. There’s something about the sun, sunlight, being able to see everything. Yet with people, sometimes you don’t see anything, even in the sunlight. She feels like that sometimes, with him. In the darkness, we’re all equal. Even when you see into someone, it’s a little more difficult in the darkness. She stares out at the stars. They’re the same stars, shining, the ones that lit the way on their moonlit strolls. The same stars she wishes she could escape, at night, too much a reminder of him. Of their past moments, now faded.
Yet she writes, filling the card from corner to corner, with many of the words she’s already given him and many she’s only wished she’d said, Love. She has every intention of giving him this card, it brought her a smile after all, and if she could share that, with him. But she wonders, in the back of her mind, if she’s just writing this for herself. Maybe trying to purge herself of everything she’s feeling. If that’s the case, it’s not working and she knows. She feels she has to send it. She has to let him know, even if it means nothing to him, now.
She finishes. Puts a period on the last word of the last sentence. Draws her smile, the one she wore recently, next to her name. She leaves out the tears, as she dries her cheeks. She addresses the envelope, licks it closed and with the card inside, lets it fall from her window into the dumpster below her apartment. She looks up at the stars one last time, closes her eyes and falls to slumber.