Dear Melanie - Robert Clark (jenna bush book club txt) 📗

Your eyes were always wondering what I was thinking, often your lips voiced the question. I always had an answer but never one my mind and tongue could agree on. As you waited, your eyebrows scrunching to decipher the message in my features, my mouth would have succeeded in saying everything except that which would have answered your question.

It wasn’t my intention to circumvent all your fair inquires, but every time you came near, my mutinous heart would beat with impossible strength, commanding my body to rebel and giving it the power to think on its own.

So when you gazed at me with your shining golden mesmerizing stare, my focus buckled and my body rioted. My hands trembled, my knees wobbled- unsure of how to control themselves, my stomach growled- roaring with a life all its own, and my entire body reverberated to the beat of rebellion.

When you grew exasperated and left me there to choke on my own tongue, left me to believe that my unwillingness to speak directly led to your misery, left me to drown in a pool of my dark crimson tears, I told myself that one day I would whisk you away from the binding shackles you called home. I would kidnap you from this cold wretched castle, save you from the illusion of luxury, and from the prying eyes and ears of the oppressive nobles, servants and couriers that consistently encroached on the space between you and I.

We would be alone at last; together on the Smiling Raven. There, I could think clearly instead of spouting out words like a fool. There, we wouldn’t have to worry about appearances or customs or rules or laws. It could be just us, just like we always wanted. Except, things changed didn’t they?

I can’t remember how we met, but I remember how we came to know each other. The time was fall, but the scent of spring’s daisies still hung in the air. I was strolling through the arbor. It wasn’t a casual scenic stroll, but rather, a quick paced shuffle towards my next destination. I made my way to the end and nimbly crossed over the stone wall meant to characterize the building as a fortress.

“Walls and fences are only barriers if you believe them to be,” my father used to say. “Anyone could easily get over them if only they had the proper audacity. Society is the only real barrier, not stone or wood. If you didn’t worry so much about what others thought of you, you’d accomplish so much more. A wall is only a symbol. It’s meant to keep in sheep not man. If society…” Father always griped about society. He would go on and on about how the middle class always got the worst end of the stick. “We make a decent living and get rewarded with heavier taxes, and then we don’t have enough money left over to feed ourselves. If I had my hands on the King I swear I’d wring his fat walrus neck.” If my father knew that I was working for the royal family now he’d be rolling in his grave.

I smiled to myself as I dropped down behind a tree in the entrance courtyard. This tree would come to mean a lot to me one day, but today it was just a way to conceal my questionable entry. The last time I was spotted by a noble it took me a long time to convince them that I was a stonemason and had fallen from the wall. Of course I wasn’t a stonemason and I never fall, but I wasn’t about to lose my prestigious job over some petty rule. Needless to say, I became more careful with how I took my shortcuts.

I casually made my way through the grand mahogany doors, the carvings embedded in them never ceasing to distract my attention. I paused to brush off my pants and adjust my satchel, letting my eyes wander over the sharp wooden curves of a falcon’s wings. “Just what do you think you are doing?” I cringed at the berating tone and slowly wheeled around to face my apprehender.

Text: Robert Clark
Publication Date: 04-18-2012

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Dedication:
Forgive me princess, this story was never meant to be put in writing, but my traitorous fingers wrote it behind my back, no doubt with the help of the shards of my heart that longed to relive these moments.