Excerpt from a short story I wrote a few months ago

"Eventually, the heart repairs." She says it plaintively, as though she does not really believe in it. Her fingers are trembling. She has long, slender fingers. Her nails are perfectly oval-shaped. And it is trembling. "Eventually, the heart repairs." She mutters it again, as though to reassure herself, not me.

We sit in the thick silence for a while. It is then I realized you could actually hear silence, although it is meant to be silent. It is a dark, misty night. The moon is covered by clouds, and the stars seem to also be in hiding.

"Are you really leaving me?"

I open my mouth to start a sentence, then pause and stare at her for a while. She is a really beautiful lady. Her hair is long, to the waist. It's ebony black. She has a center parting. Her eyebrows are perfectly arched, her eyes are double-lidded and almond-shaped, her nose is sharp and her mouth is shaped like a rosebud. Perfect. She is perfect, I thought.

"Yes."

She moves her head to look at me. Her perfect almond-shaped eyes are overflowing with sadness in the form of tears, and even so, she still looks perfect. Her rosebud lips are trembling; pouting. I embrace her, and stroke her hair to calm her down, and told her I am sorry - that I had no choice.

"My mother told me that line. 'Eventually, the heart repairs,' she told me, when I was a wee kid. I was crying that day, because my grandmother - her mother - just passed away, and I was awfully close to her. It felt like a piece of me died as well. My heart broke. I told my mother that. My mother was crying as well. We all were - my mother, my father, my older sister, and me. When I told her that, she quietly whispered to me, as though it was a secret, that particular line."

She stopped.

"Did you believe her?"

"Yes. I believed her."

"Believe, or believed?"

"Believed. I no longer believe in it. Yes, the heart repairs. But once broken, it will never be as beautiful and pure as before. The heart is damaged. Even when repaired, it has been damaged and it will never be the same again. Eventually, the heart repairs, but you're still broken inside."

"Kind of like a lizard tail, huh? Once it has been chopped off, it won't grow back as majestic as before."

"That's a weird way of putting it, but I guess you could say so."

And that was our last conversation together, before I materialized into the air.