Legend has it you can bring a loved one home by wrapping yourself in the vines of their home and professing your love for them. Seemed silly, he knew, yet he would try anything that might help bring her home to him. She was the light of his life, his heart, and he was forever lost without her. He had been waiting too long to be whole again.
Saturday morning he headed out towards her villa. He walked the few miles, stopping only for some light fare and water along the way. Maybe it was his hope, optimism this could work, he didn’t know, but it seemed the world was just a much more beautiful and positive place this morning.
He was hot when he arrived, the blazing sun and walk having caught up with him, so he stripped his shirt before starting with the vines. He pulled and twisted, wrapping the vines about his body as he leaned against the brick protecting wall.
Once finished, sweat dripped from his brow until the coolness of the brick vined wall soothed his fiery skin and calmed his beating heart. He turned his head towards the heavens and prayed for his love to return. He professed his love and longing for her, his desire to hold her close to him again, to be complete and whole.
Time passed. Silence enveloped him as the dusk moved in and the birds went off to nest. He began to worry that the whole vine legend was just that, a legend, a hoax, an old fairy tale that did nothing but tell a lovely bedtime story for children to dream about.
He felt defeated and was about to untangle himself and head home when he caught sight of something in the window. A dim light in the villa gave light to the shadows that moved within it. His heart leapt before plunging to depths of heartbreak. She was one of the shadows but the other shadow wasn’t him. There was another holding her, kissing her, stroking her.
He was frozen in that moment, unable to move, lost to everything. The vines that had earlier comforted him now trapped him. The wall that had soothed him now chilled. The light that had given him hope now only showed him there was no hope.