4am leaves

Warm from the buzz of liquor and good friends, they talk quietly, but idly, about their differences, as music from his merc's stereo played on in the background. There is the mildest distraction- light rain spilling under the street lamp like golden stars coming straight for them- and they step out to leaves falling from the tree she liked to call her own. A story she once told, or weaved as she lost track of where she had read it, and a story that stuck with him;

he reaches for the falling leaves as she laughs, barefoot on the damp gravel. Three, he catches, as he proudly presented them in his Muhammad Ali shirt, and three happy days it meant she received and kept safely over her heart when she found no pockets in her zebra print leggings. He walks her to her gate, and she suddenly trusts that of all people, he would most likely be the one who would pin the star on the three-storey high pine tree she loved.

"If this is love," she thought as the silent night took over when he drove on home at four thirty, "If this is love,"- she repeated to be sure- "it could probably last me a lifetime."

Oh, but it was not.