Safe and Sound.

They were just kids really, when they fell in love.

He was just a boy who painted his skin with the squished juice of lightning bugs and wore his sheet like a cape, tied tight around his neck.

She wanted to be braver and act older, like her sister, and have boys trip falling over her feet like drunk blind men. But she was too afraid. Afraid of falling too hard, and getting hurt, and the thunderstorm outside her window.

So she sat on window sills and rooftops and lived through the pages of books, safe and sound.

When they met, their eyes ran into each other's for a second, maybe less.
From then, they wrote to each other. Letters full of their future plans and hopes and beliefs and feelings on topics, but never for each other. She read them over and over before replying carefully and articulately; safe and soundly.

He read hers, in a dark basement with eyes watching even when there were none, and replied slowly and carefully, with dictionary words and exaggerated truths.

Three years later, their eyes trip stumbled on to each other's again, but this time they wouldn't let go.

When she told him they couldn't be together because she was too afraid, of falling too hard, and getting hurt, and the storm outside her window, he told her,

"Don't be afraid, I'll catch you if you fall. I'm painted with the juice of lightning, the thunderstorm won't hurt you."

All writing (C) Grace McConnell. Image Source.