A short story I was gonna submit in class but didn't.

What is in the word, the small four lettered word, love? I could never understand this word, until recently. How can you express what it is to feel 'love', in one tiny four letter word?
There's so much to it. A four letter word can't describe the many aspects involved in 'love'. It can't descrive the elation one feels to be close to the one they love, or the feeling of being loved back.
It can't describe the hollowness of being away from that person. It can't describe any of the sensations of 'love', the feeling that your chest is suddenly swelling, or the tingling in your stomach, or anything and everything else. How can it? It is just a four letter word.

That is what I thought. That is what I felt for he and I.
I remember the 'dating period' very well. The laid back visits to the cinema, and my favourite, the park.
I loved the park. We would go there in every weather, every season. Summer was more perferable to me than any other season, however. I remember lying in the grass with him, sandals flung off beside me, a cool, soft breeze flowing over my face, my arms.
I remember the feel of the grass between my toes, so rough yet so soothing. We would lie ther for hours, listening to the plants sway, the kids playing football in the clearing, the old women admiring the asphodéles, and all the other flowers fully in bloom.
We would even sleep there. Sometimes I would simply watch him sleep, the rise and fall of his chest.
It wasn't a typical teenage romance. I believed, and still believe, that it was love. Ignore the adults, and the overused phrase, "You're too young to know what it is...". I knew.

A four letter word can't descrive the heart-wrenching feeling of when you not only fear for the one you love, but must also leave them.
The bitterness of it, and the fact that it is only sorrow that makes your chest feel like it's swelling now.
Of course, no matter what, once you love someone, you can never stop loving them. You never get over it. You constantly curse fate for coming and cutting away a part of you. The four letter word can't describe how the pain of that wound is always there, it never dulls, you can only try to forget it sometimes. But it is always, always there.

I remember suddenly waking from my dose on the soft, sweet-smelling grass, to find him rising.
"Where are you going?" I heard myself mumble, rubbing sleepy eyes. He brushed the grass for the back of his trousers and straightened.
"I just saw a buddy, I'll be right back, don't worry."

I sat up straight, and stretched. I let out a long yawn. Then I look around the park for him, and found him easily, under the large oak tree. Some parents tell thier children that tree is over 300 years old.

But I don't recognise the 'buddy' with him.... Who was he?
I watched them chat for a while, thier hands in thier pockets, looking around, but why did he look so nervous?
Suddenly, they reached out and shook hands. Or so it would appear. I saw much more than that, I saw the little plastica bag with the white powder in it, being passed. It happened so swiftly, nobody would have seen it, had they not been looking already.



A four letter word cannot describe this aspect of 'love'. Imagine, how you would feel, it someone you love dearly, who you hold closer to your heart than anyone else, is destroying themselves, bit by bit? Imagine, also, that there is nothing you can do about it. The helplessness, the pain... A four letter word can't describe all that, can it?

Thats what I thought, until that incident. But then I realised, how appropriate it is.
Something as small as a four letter word can change everything. Something as small as a tiny plastic bag can change everything.

I saw that it was all relative. It's not how small the thing is, but what is in it. As small as the word is, love contains all the feelings and aspects that all of us are sure to feel at some point in our lives. That little plastic bag contained something buch bigger than its actualy size, too.




I attended his funeral a year later. My family, my friends, they were all by my side. They all spoke of how they couldn't imagine how I felt, but that they could try. I'm glad they tried. Something as small as that helped me in was bigger than they even know.

........poet.........?

Ah, okay then, lol.