By: Frankie and Christine

He knew as soon as she walked out the door that he would never see her again. His heart sunk down into his stomach as he realized the only thing left to survive on are the memories of her. Fists clenched, blood pulsing through his veins, he set out for the only place that had ever made him feel sane--the docks. He kneeled down, head facing the water, he saw her reflection over his as his memory tasted her cherry lips. She whispered to him, something distant and vague that he couldn’t decipher. Confused, he nervously reached into his pocket, and the key to her apartment flew out and into the water- he had forgotten he previously stole it from her room. “What did she just say?” he wondered.

His palms sweating, and hands shaking, he reached for his cell phone anticipating a call or text any minute now. He contemplated giving her a call, searched for her name in his Contacts List, and realized that her name was no longer there. “The nerve,” Gianni thought, “how dare she erase her number from my **** phone? Now what am I going to do? Well, it’s better if she contacts me first anyway.”

Days passed and no phone call from Gabriella. Frantically biting his nails, he figured by now she has already moved on with another lucky guy, while he has been completely erased from her heart and mind- what a bitter cold thought how cruel life can really be. “Honestly, though, wouldn’t she at least want her key back?” he asked himself as the bitter cold swept upon his raw, cracked cheek. “And furthermore, how the hell did she get back into her apartment? No one else was home,” he tried to think rationally.

Gianni needed answers, and despite feeling crazy, he ventured back to the neighborhood where their love once was shared--would she be home? For what felt like an eternity, he ran towards her home, but he slowed down once he reached the door face-to-face suddenly feeling hesitant to ring her bell. Fingers quivering, he slowly pressed the small, black button. His body aching with the thought of the worst possible outcome, he turned around and slunk out before he could even see if there was a response.

Gianni found himself sitting on a bench a few blocks away, lonely and insecure. He looked at the time on his watch, it was 8:45 pm. He exhaled-it was so cold, he could see his breath -and in the vapor, he saw the image of Gabriella’s face. Then, the phone suddenly rang in his pocket- he reached hoping to see her mystical number again, but it was his mother calling for dinner.

He made his way back home, through side streets that he hadn’t ventured in years, finally to come home to see Gabriella in her baby blue peacoat waiting for him outside his stoop. There, he saw her, standing with open arms and a smile awaiting his presence. He walked towards her, but as soon as he put his arms around her embrace, she disappeared like the cold vapor from his breath- it was a dream- it was all just a dream.

“Was it a dream though?” he thought to himself, “or am I hallucinating? Is there a difference?”

The food on the table repulsed him and he could not eat any of it- it was steak and mashed potatoes again. He felt an urge to *****. There was a knock at the door, which jolted him in his seat and shook him to his core. He ran down the stairs to open to the door, only to find, Raymond, the UPS man, delivering a package that he needed to sign for. To his surprise, the return address was from New Mexico with just the name “Moretti” on the upper-lefthand corner--Gabriella’s last name.

He hesitated if he should open up the package, but his hands were opening the box before he could think again and he found two blue onyx gemstones with a note. “Gianni---the night we last spoke, I impulsively packed my bags and hopped on the very next plane to New Mexico. Maybe one day we will meet again and I will feel for you what I once felt. Have a wonderful life.”

His heart stopped, and he remembered how they used to just spend some summer evenings on the floor of her bedroom listening to Mother Nature’s Son by The Beatles from the White Album- a tear dropped from his left eye onto the backside of his dry hand like a raindrop onto a cracked drought ground. Humming along to that tune, he Googled what blue onyx gemstones are used for. These stones are especially good for people under mental and emotional stress and they are said to improve one's intuition and natural instincts, eliminate bad habits, give the strength for and to change, and to experience an overall feeling of inner rejuvenation.

“Guess she’s trying to tell me something,” he thought. He felt so dead inside and wondered how could she have left during the lowest and weakest point in his life. Tossing and turning all night in his bed, he remembered how he was once told how people put crystals underneath their pillows at night. Why not give it a shot? He put the two gemstones underneath his pillow, laid his tired head down on the cold side of the pillow, and suddenly drifted into a dream.

Up floating in the cosmos, Gabriella appeared to him surrounded by a baby blue light, the same shade as her peacoat. He began elevating up towards her level as he looked into her aquamarine sky eyes, as if it were her eyes that elevated him, and then he began swimming in the air with the pink fish and the violet dolphins. Then shades of orange, amber, metallic green, silver, and gold swam in circles around his soul, while a mirror came down in front of him and he saw his reflection of half black and white. All in the background surrounding him were various shades of gray. Gianni then began to hear Gabriella sing their cosmic song and suddenly he now could understand what her mirage had once whispered to him at the docks: We are timeless and you are now here, not with me but as me, inside me. Let go and burn out like the flame in the wind. You are nowhere. You are we. We are both the lock and the key.