The 8th Wonder

Short story I wrote when I was much younger that I cam across the other day. I guess it was about a boy I loved once.

It didn’t take much for me to fall in love. Something as small as a glance could do it. It wasn’t until now that I  realised that whatever I felt back then, it wasn’t love. This was love. I didn’t stick out like the other girls at school. I wasn’t ugly, just ordinary. He was something extraordinary. 

He had dark brown hair, the kind of colour that reminded you of the dark, warm winter nights, with a cup of steaming thick hot chocolate to keep you warm. His jawline could have cut your finger and his lips were a look of perfection, soft and full and,  I  feel stupid admitting that i would have loved to have got myself lost in the feel of those lips on my own. But it was his eyes that made me lose my breath in the soft wind. They were the same blue of the Caribbean sea and they looked so deep and full of mystery and compassion that I felt honoured when his eyes lingered on mine for those few precious seconds. Suddenly all the legends about the beautiful Greek gods were not stories anymore, they had to be  real because I was certain that I was looking at one right now. It was the only explanation because no simple human could be that beautiful.

Before long I discovered it was not just his looks that were breath-taking but his personality also. He was reckless yet careful, he was merciless yet compassionate and I couldn't get enough of him. I’d never tried drugs for fear of all those horror stories that you see online but I had become addicted to him the way that a junkie gets addicted to heroin. He was the most intricate form of self-destruction that I'd ever met. I knew he was dangerous and unpredictable, yet I couldn't bring myself to walk away from him. I should have known then that this would only end in pain and stone-cold suffering. 

I gave him everything I had, every part of my body was dominated by him, without him even trying. I gave him things I gave no one else and he took me places no one else could have shown me. Surely there was nothing else in the world more beautiful than the feeling I got on my skin when he touched me. He could start a fire that would spread from my head to my toes with a single touch. When I was with him I didn't need anything else. 

People have spoken to me about their great love and I knew that I had found mine because surely things cannot feel any better than they did when I was with him. Surely there was no one else who would have the ability to make me feel how he does and more. He made me feel like I was flying, a complete sense of freedom and peace. I saw the stars in his beautiful eyes, heard the crashing waves in his powerful voice and felt the pleasure in his touch.

The power he had over my body and soul did not scare me in the way it should have done. My only fear was that I did not do the same for him, something he would convince me was my paranoia when he looked at me, with those eyes that I had grown to love so dearly. I knew this was it. There could be no feeling to compete with what I felt every second I was with him. It was agonizing to be away from him but that would all be forgotten with a single glance into those eyes. I was in love. He was mine, and I was his. There was nothing that could break a love so pure and right; was there? 

They say that there are only 7 wonders of the world, but they are wrong. There are 8. Something as powerful and beautiful as love can not be explained as anything but a wonder. No other feeling in the world will create the courage it takes to take a bullet for another human. No other feeling in the world can make you believe it was all worth it. As I lay here broken and defeated, I do not hurt or feel sad because I know that I saw magic in the world when I looked at him, even if he no longer sees that magic when he looks at me with those beautiful eyes. The wave of pain that comes crashing through my heart, lungs and soul is eased by the knowledge that I was allowed to be part of such a wonder.