Magic takes two forms:
One is love, the other is speech

There is a story of a girl, and so it goes:
She was born an old soul and carried herself likewise
As she tumbled through adolescence
She encountered both demons and angels, as we all do

I see her in my mind
With the weight of the world on her shoulders
She stares out her window into the clouds
She thinks of things she has long since hidden away
Of nooses and handcuffs disguised as jewellery,
Of pages stuffed with nonsense,
Of gifts never given and borrowed things never returned

Blue eyes, brown hair
She sits there
Distracted by messy memories within her head
And she wonders what could’ve been

But there were days before these
When all was simple for this girl
Not long ago, her only job was this:
To let her guardian angels preserve her ignorant bliss

And so she did as she was told
And so she soaked up all the love they gave her
And each day, as she grew
Another piece of her soul would come to life
And it broke through the surface, it shone right through
And the angels simply smiled

There came a day some years ago
When this girl discovered magic
Tucked in between yellowing pages
And lurking on dusty bookshelves

A time came when she fought off the late night hours,
Warded off darkness by drinking in the pages
Every free moment spent reading, scribbling, sharing
It didn’t take long until her life revolved around other people’s stories

And so the words became her blanket when she was cold
Her comfort when she was worried
Her sunshine on a rainy day
Her light even in the darkest of nights

She kept them close to her heart but covered her walls in them
So she would never forget

There came a day when this girl
With eyes as wide as an infant and a heart as fragile as the same
Yearned to feel these stories for herself and live inside them
She vowed she’d settle for the damsel in distress
If it meant she could live a life worthy of ink and paper

She grew tired of watching
Waiting for the hero of her own story to arrive
And so she stuck her young face to the heavens
And begged and prayed and pleaded with those angels
So that she could be a part of what she loved most
And the angels simply smiled

There came a day when she had to wait no longer
For one day, she rounded the corner in her small suburban town
Only to come face to face with her future

And there he stood, a boy with long hair
And an easy charm that could change your life
Without one extra moment to think it over
Or comprehend the chaos
She looked up, only to find herself intertwined in the threads of a fairytale

Each word on each page was just another stepping stone
Yes, she shared her story with this boy
And began to recognize from her books all the things she was feeling

Howling winds turned to sweet, soft melodies
Heavy, cold snow turned to a blanket of elegance
Everything - including the ugly things – was beautiful
And happiness followed her wherever she went

He brought the same magic into her life that the words had done
And she loved him for that
Effortlessly, almost compulsively, she did what she knew best
She soaked up all the love he gave her
Capturing each moment in her scribbled notebooks
Careful never to miss a beat
Careful to record every sweet sentence he uttered
And every single thing he made her feel

What everyone had promised would only be a simple song
Short and sweet
Extended into a four hundred and sixty-one page novel
Her wish had been granted:
She was now living amongst yellowing pages and dusty bookshelves
Alongside all the world’s most beautiful people

Together, the boy and the girl;
They were magic

Together they touched upon every landscape
Feeling the soil of every world beneath their palms
She was so overjoyed to have a hero and a storyline at her fingertips
That she forgot that one day, it had to end
Even the best stories had a finale, not one of them lasted forever

Hiding from a harsh truth, she convinced herself that she would be the very first authoress
To write the never-ending novel
But really, no love for even the most beautiful of tales
Will ever be strong enough to make it everlasting

And so she invested her heart and soul into a boy
Who promised to protect her from cold, dark, and loneliness
She honestly believed in him with every particle in her body
And looked up at him with those naive, wide eyes
As he continued to dazzle her on each and every page

Inevitably there came a day when this girl reached the final few pages
Not because she wanted to -
Because my God,
She wanted nothing more than to leave her bookmark where it was
And simply forget to finish -
But deep down
She knew
That it was time to let go

She read those final words of resolution
And watched as the boy, with tears in his eyes,
Rounded that same suburban street corner on which they had first met
Coming face to face with her past
Without looking back

At the same time she ran head first into a future without him
Panicking as she realized that he had whisked away all magic when he disappeared
And suddenly, the words had lost their meaning
For surely no word in the English language could describe the pain she felt

Scared, lost, and alone in a place that used to be so familiar
She stood still for so long, unsure of which way to go
She grew tired of waiting for her hero
To come back and help her salvage the few pieces of her story that were left

It didn’t take long for her to see that
No words could save her now, and no amount of bliss could protect her
She hesitated and stuttered, constantly fumbled and made mistakes
And yelled desperately at the sky
And though she could not see it,
The angels simply smiled

After eternities of emptiness
Simply
Suddenly
Unpredictably
Inexplicably
The sun came out
As if nothing had ever happened
It brought with its rays the words, the glorious words

The girl’s wide eyes lit up as she realized
That the final page she had turned
Was just the end of a chapter
A part of bigger story
A story in which she was the hero, the leading lady

She realized that after everything, she was still alive
The world had kept moving on and it was time she did the same
Her guardian angels simply smiled
For now she knew that she had just experienced the greatest story of all time

Or so it goes.