Dear Francis,
It’s cold. I’m cold. My hands are the icicles that you’ve always known them to be. My heart aches. It aches and breaks for you, the lost boy. It aches and breaks for Chester, who blinks his green eyes from the future and watches you cry. My heart aches and breaks and I still don’t cry, I never cry, why can I never cry? My tears died. I don’t know how to let you go, I don’t know how to move on. You’re my soul mate, aren’t you? We’ve been through so much. But time, time, terrible time has torn us apart and dangles the golden thread of a better future dangerously close to our lips.I wonder why I cannot seem to be without you, then I remember that I gave you a piece of my heart, a half of my soul, and you still have it in you, deep in your core. I pick my way down the path of a painful friendship and trip and fall and bleed, but don’t cry. I keep my lips sealed because I don’t want the world to know that suddenly you’re just my best friend and not my future husband. I try to smile, I laugh and play, but you just take it all away. Why? Why must I be abandoned at this time when everything falls apart around me...my family is breaking, my body is, too. My soul would’ve broken a long time ago, but then you arrived with the right tools to fix it. I was happy and you were happy, but something in you failed and you broke again and again until you finally walked away and took the golden tools with you, and so I break again.
Love. The tortuous beast. It is a delicate balance between poison and cure, and now it has suddenly become the poison, and it roars through me, stealing my warmth and freezing me. I shiver. It laughs. Far, far away, you cry, and an innocent girl is caught in the net of a twisted love story. She searches for a way to comfort you, but what is right? She’s been wanting you for a while, and now she has you, but you’re broken. You’re stolen. I have your heart in my teeth and I’m not letting go because you promised me forever, and now you’re ripping my fairy tale to shreds. The knight has left the princess in the dragon’s lair, and he’s not sure if he should go back and save her, or go forward and take the hand of the fresh-faced maiden who won’t cause him pain. A line of maidens waits outside the dragon’s cave, all of them promising a less painful today for a happier future. What does he do?
What
Does
He
Do?