orange groves
“I love you,” he would say and she would turn to face him.
“I can’t hear you.”
(She always could.)
“I LOVE YOU.”
She would laugh her gentle laugh that reminded him of waves rolling, of the wind playing the trees.
“You don’t need to tell me.”
(She knew.)
Their love was one of watching the sun fade to red dust, of watching the star strewn sky, of dancing in the street side curb, the streetlight draped across their arms, their mingling voices their music, of sitting in silence, because they were beyond mere words. Their love was of him, of her.
They would sit on the dirt together, leaving behind the lavender dusk and waiting for the promise of the night. He laughed and she laughed and amongst the dying light, their love blossomed, as untouchable as the winds that caressed them.
In those eternal summer nights, he loved her more and he loved her plain eyes and her wild hair and her wide cheeks and her mottled arms. They sat barefooted amongst the brown grass and the cracked ground and ate oranges spotted black from being loved too much but she didn’t envision desert snow or cloudless skies or orange trees and so, he loved her more. And because nobody loved them together and only apart, they loved each other more.
“Do you ever wish I was beautiful?”
(He closed his eyes. It was all the same in the blackness.)
And because he was them and they were him and he was her and she was him, he said, “We don’t need you to be.”
(In her imperfection, she was beautiful.)
But, under the cage of daylight he was
him and she was
her. He was annoying and she was ungrateful. He was envious and she was foolish.
And she would write and write until her palms were splattered with ink stains and her world was reduced to words and in the morning light, she wouldn’t dream of orange trees but of orange groves.
He would call to her, feeling lonely, mouth dribbling orange juice, in that voice that was the midnight strolls, the curbside laughter, that was too loud, too low and as perfectly imperfect as their love, that was
her and ask, “Why do you write so much?”
(It was like breathing.)
“Stop writing. Let’s go outside.”
(She couldn’t.)
“Let me read.”
(She wouldn’t.)
The air would be empty that morning, punctuated only by the sound of her scribbles and his footsteps.
And because he was
him and she was
her, they weren’t and their love faded into the stars that were supposed to be theirs, into the oranges they loved too much, into the impenetrable recess of yesterday.
Summer. Fall. Winter. Spring.
They would pass and
they would pass, stars in the inky sky, and among the wind and silent nights, amongst her orange groves, she would laugh and smile and time would pass as surely as love would.
She never could eat those oranges.
A/N: 500 words exactly, as per the rules of the challenge. Please leave a review! If you liked this little one-shot, you may wish to check out my novella, The Sound of Silence, which is a prequel to this one-shot and uses the same style. Thanks so much for reading!
-xoxo-
Celeste 
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