Black and White

Black and white photographs lie on the floor where you left them: an ode to her, to her memory, and to the memories the two of you shared.  

Closing your eyes, you can almost remember running through these empty halls with her, surrounded by cardboard boxes which you’d filled with your lives before each other. You can remember her laughter bouncing off the empty walls, and eating out of cardboard Chinese take-out boxes on the new hardwood floors.  Your shadows on the walls were your movie, and you used bundled up sheets for a bed.  You spent the night like a middle-school sleepover.  You were comfortable; you were happy. 

You remember dancing with her, all eyes on you as you spun circles on your wedding night.  You remember kissing her, feeling like you never had before, like this was the first time, and nobody else was in the room with you.  So clearly, like it was yesterday, you remember coming back to the honeymoon suite, carrying her over the threshold, throwing her on the bed and scattering flower petals everywhere.  You remember not caring about anything or knowing anything else besides this: her beauty, and the realization that you’d be waking up next to her every morning for the rest of your life.

You can remember, as the years passed and the two of you grew older together, how the life you’d dreamt of started to take shape.  You painted the walls together – bright, happy colors and you remember spending lazy Sundays emptying those boxes you’d both brought with you.  You remember walking through the no-longer empty halls and smiling to yourself, because life was taking shape just like you’d both always imagined it would. 

You remember all the vacations you took together:  daytrips to the beach, long weekends in Boston, summer vacation and second and third honeymoons in paradise.  You remember the sandcastles you built together, and never wanting to come home. 

How could life have been any more perfect, any more like you’d always dreamt it would be?  You had everything you’d always wanted, and you were happy. 

Now though, with her gone, it’s those first couple of nights that you miss the most: making shadow puppets on the blank walls, closing your eyes and knowing this was love, and this was being happy.  You miss running through the halls of your couple-sized home, laughing just before finally catching her outside of the kitchen and slipping off her bright yellow dress.  

You miss her. 

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I wrote this for my Creative Writing class, in response to a prompt.  (It's a revised/lengthened version of something I wrote before)  The Professor is assigning a 3-5 page story though, and I think I may use this as the basis for mine.  Any thoughts?

<3