are we a moment, or a lifetime?

life with steven meeks is like the trope where the beautiful and kind wife dies at the beginning of the movie and you only get a few scenes with her. short clips of sunlight and laughter, tinged with a bittersweet taste of nostalgia. it's over before you know it, just a short span of time before the real action begins.

that described the time you had spent together pretty well.

right after you married, you spent a few months just living in bliss together. buying a house in the countryside, settling into the neighbourhood as the young married couple with the unusual last name and befriending the neighbours. they would half-heartedly roll their eyes at you, muttering something about "young love" when they'd see you dancing and giggling at the town's fair with steven spinning and twirling you around. to steven, you looked like an angel with your hair flowing in the summer's breeze and your lacey dress making pretty shapes whenever he spun you around.

your neighbours would groan at the giggles that could be heard from your house in the middle of the night, waking up to find a bag of cookies at their front porch, the result of your late night baking shenanigans. they would huff and puff when melodies of your singing and the same song over and over trailed to their house and when they had to (yet again) watch steven look at you like you hung the damn moon.

and yet as much as they were annoyed with the two of you, you reminded them of how they were when they had just married. the young lovebirds from next door.

you had your moments together, your very own movie worthy scenes. you spent summer evenings at the lake, bathing in the sunset and jumping from the pier together.

sunny mornings in bed, with warm light filtering through the thin white curtains, drinking coffee that was way too sweet and laughing about messy hair in the morning. burnt pancakes, light pink laundry that was meant to stay white, falling asleep at the kitchen table where you had tried to do your taxes but couldn't for the life of you stay awake in the process, staying up way too late looking at the stars in your backyard and having to drag each other out of bed the next day. getting excited when you managed to keep your first plant alive and not having to watch it die a slow death like all your other ones. steven insisting on celebrating its first birthday. having your third toaster explode in a week.

a life you were both figuring out together.

you'd throw summer parties in your garden, with lanterns and homemade lemonade, inviting the poets and steven's colleagues from his new job. charlie complements your cooking and chris and knox show you pictures of their newborn.

later that night, when the sun's brilliance has finally faded and the sky has turned a midnight blue, you slow dance to your song playing softly in the background. you'd find nothing but love and softness in his eyes, his hands on your waist and a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

the next morning, the letter from the army came.

it was sudden for the both of you, he didn't expect to be called in so soon and especially at such an inconvenient time. you two were happy and the last thing he wanted was to leave. but the letter came anyway, putting a rather abrupt stop to the life you had built with each other.

it would be early in the morning, on a rather crisp and foggy morning when he'd tell you. you would find him sitting in the living room before the sun had even risen, his head in his hands with a piece of paper in front of him. when you ask what's wrong, all he can do is look at you sadly, his eyes red from having cried. and you know. you know they've finally written to him, the thing you'd dreaded having finally happened. war had started and they needed all the men they could get.

you sob in his arms for hours.

when you send him off, all you feel is numbness. your eyes seem to become an endless pool of tears.

he sends you beautiful love poems and letters to tell you how much he misses you. he also carries a picture of you in his pocket at all times, a candid of you wearing your wedding dress with the brightest smile on your face. when he hears the bombs and missiles above his bunker, he likes looking at it, remembering that day.

he comes home in the summer and it's nearly too much. there are new scars on his face and even though he lights up as he sees you, it doesn't quite reach his eyes, which have lost their usual spark. there's a certain dullness to them, a weariness that seems to have spread through his entire

body. it seemed as though his entire soul was tired. sometimes you'd catch him staring off into the distance, a solemn look on his face that you'd only ever seen on his face when his father had passed way two years ago. he started hugging you tighter, pulling you closer when you'd fall asleep after a long day.

you only have two weeks together and you try nursing him back to health. you drive to the lake where you had spent so many afternoons together, the summer fair where you'd shared your first kiss. he comes back to himself, piece by piece, but you know that he has seen and done things you could never erase, no matter how much love you poured into him.

"come back to me", you say to him before he leaves, a pleading look in your eyes. he nods. "I will", is what he promises. "I'll always come back to you." you never knew that was the last time you'd see him.

he's shot on a snowy winter's day and he bleeds out under a weeping willow, facing a frozen lake. he smiles at the beauty of it, thinking of how you always loved the snow. he remembers your first christmas together and how excited you had been because of the snow in your backyard. you had made two snowmen, one for him and one for you and had put the autumn's last red leaves atop the head of his snowman so that it could have red hair, just like him. you'd spent the day playing in the snow like two little kids, chasing each other through the garden in a snowball fight and hiding behind the broad fir tree when your neighbour had come out to see what all the noise was about. steven muffled your giggles with his cold glove and when you just couldn't seem to stop, he rolled his eyes, smiling despite himself, and kissed you.

he doesn't know if it's the cold making his mind hazy but the last thing he sees is you, walking towards him in the snow, wearing his favorite summer dress of yours. the one with the white lace you'd worn so many times when the two of you had gone dancing. he wonders if you aren't cold but you crouch down to him, smiling, and tuck a bloody strand of hair behind his ear. he swears he feels your hand on his cheek and his heavy eyes try to blink to see if you are real or just a figment on his mind.