- Joy Lahman
- Nov 4, 2025
- 2 min read
In the quiet town of Marigold Hollow, tucked between rustling wheat fields and the hum of passing freight trains, lived a girl named Eliza. She was sixteen and had already lived in seven different houses, each with its own set of rules, smells, and silences. Her suitcase was small, but her heart carried the weight of every goodbye.
Eliza didn’t believe in forever. Not in homes, not in promises, and certainly not in love. She had seen couples argue behind closed doors, watched foster siblings vanish overnight, and learned that “I’ll always be here” was just another way of saying “until I’m not.”
Her current foster home was with the Whitakers, a kind but distant couple who gave her space and warm meals but never asked about the sketchbook she kept under her pillow. In it, Eliza drew faces—some imagined, some remembered. One face appeared often: a boy with soft eyes and a crooked smile. She didn’t know his name, only that he was the kind of person who might have stayed.
At school, Eliza kept to herself. She was polite but quiet, never lingering in conversations. She watched other girls fall in love—notes passed in lockers, hands held under cafeteria tables, whispered secrets in the library. She didn’t envy them. She didn’t believe love was for her. Love required roots, and Eliza had only ever known wings.
One spring afternoon, while sketching in the park, a boy named Jonah sat beside her. He didn’t ask questions, just watched her draw. His presence was gentle, like sunlight through leaves. They met again the next day, and the next. He never asked about her past, and she never offered it. Their silence was a kind of understanding.
But Eliza knew better. She had learned that people leave, even the ones who seem like they won’t. So when Jonah asked if she wanted to go to the spring dance, she said no. She told him she didn’t believe in love, not for people like her. He looked at her, not with pity, but with something softer, grief, maybe. Then he left.
That night, Eliza opened her sketchbook and drew him one last time. She added wings to his back, not because he was leaving, but because she wanted him to fly. She closed the book and placed it on her windowsill, where the moonlight could find it.
Years passed. Eliza aged out of the system and moved to a small apartment in the city. She worked at a bookstore and still drew in the evenings. She never married, never searched for Jonah. She told herself it was better this way—no expectations, no heartbreak.
But every spring, when the cherry blossoms bloomed and the air smelled like possibility, she walked to the park and sat on the same bench. She never saw him again. Still, she waited.
Not for love. Just for spring.



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