1 The Prisoner.

NOTE: - There may be typos because I'm not used to typing on the laptop lol. I hope you enjoy!

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3 hours. Three hours. A matter of life and death. A total of 180 minutes is enough to fall in love or hate someone. 3 hours holding the time still to pump your lungs with fresh breath, ample time to craft a wreath to place on your grandmother's grave.

"If 3 hours could last forever, would it ever be enough?" I wondered.

Would it ever be enough?

I sat into my newly upgraded machine and turned the clock's hour hand three hours before me. I put my headset on, and there she was, across the street, waving at me with the most delightful smile ever. Her straight caramel hair flowed with the warm breeze. Her supple pink-tinted lips rested on her beautiful and soft whitish skin, her beautiful body that she secretly hated so much wore the most exquisite yellow dress I have ever seen that complimented all her curves. Her eyes resembled loops of honey shimmering in the summer sun. Her tiny, freshly manicured fingers held a stick of raspberry sorbet that awaited me.

I walked towards her from where I parked my car and wondered. They say the colour brown is boring, the same colour that her eyes and hair were. And falling in love made me realise that the brown they found common had power; it had tinges of nurture and brought out the best of other colours. Brown is the soil that keeps us fed. Brown is much richer than any shade of your cerulean or red, Brown is a horse galloping freely on grassy grounds energetically,

"Who knew brown eyes are just brown eyes till you fall in love with them?" I thought to myself and smiled, who knew falling in love could actually be this meaningful?

Brown does not discriminate; it takes in what your palette offers unapologetically. Brown is the hot chocolate pouring into your cup on a snowy day, It is the colour of your old plushy that you cuddled at bedtime every day. Brown is recreation, it's comfort in its softest form. Brown is the oak wood burning in your fireplace to give you warmth.

If only she knew who she was to me... And fairly, I don't know what she saw in me. I was as incompetent and undeserving of her as the others, but she chose me to fall in love with. Someone ordinary. For all I am is a man of flesh and bones with blood pumping throughout my body when she was magic. The kind of magic that would set your soul on fire each time you connect your eyes with an invisible wire. Eye contact; is a dangerous thing indeed.

Withdrawing it most of the time if it were another person, but I could look at hers fiercely and get lost like a tamarind tree's roots sinking deep into the soothing dank soil, deeply in love. Yet the butterflies in my tummy, the thoughts in my head and the urge to fall into her arms and hold her tight always persisted no matter how many years have passed since I first met her, no matter how many months it has been since I last held her and no matter how many weeks I laid on my bed with my pillows soaked in saltwater. The saltiness of tears overthrowing the bitterness of her loss.

"It would never be the same, would it Xara?", I clutched my hand to my heart as the emotional pain hurt me physically.

The heart holds on even if it can't determine a reason to stay, it just does somehow. Always.

She was why poetry was invented, my happiness and my glory. I'd spend days mourning for her, yelling at the sky and staring at the whitewashed walls that resembled my void. I could never find someone like her again. The warm touch, the therapeutic voice. The reason behind a million smiles. So, I trade three hours of my every day to go back in time and loop our moments.

Falling deeper in love with her memories. Reliving the same chapter of my life without wanting to move ahead. I couldn't get enough of my peace. I couldn't break the loop of time to reverse her accident either.

"Wouldn't that mean breaking the law of time and the universe?"

"Wouldn't that mean being the prisoner of a never-ending circle of infinity?"

"Wouldn't that mean being a criminal, ending up in a tangled mess?" I begged myself for answers.

It felt like a building storm at the sea, a feeling of asphyxiating without dying, of existing but only technically. I certainly don't hold the capacity to survive another day living in a mirage. I fell to my knees, broken each time. Struggling to hold my pieces together, on my own.

She's all I have...I had.

Society continually slams me with, 'MEN DON'T CRY.' So, I keep my head up high, my collar low. Not talk too fast to end the conversations, but I should talk comparatively slow... Glue on my pretentiously happy mask for the people I love's sake because I don't know how much more of their happiness the truth would take. The world definitely does not revolve around me, but to me, my world really did orbit her.

When they ask me how I'm doing, "I'm as good as always!", I say with a broad smile as reminiscence leads me on internally. Reminiscing brings me her. She was still my only constant thought, and the thought of her alluring face haunted me. And what haunted me was the only one I loved so deeply. Life can mostly always be frustrating.