Essay engb-1

She picks up the picture. Glancing down on it, neatly folded in her hand while grabbing her
tea with the other. Feeling the humid heat on the outside of the cup. A butterfly of anticipation bursts out of her stomach tract. Fizzling and fading out somewhere in the area of her solar plexus. This is where it's going to happen. This is it, in this very café, at this very table I will meet Him again. As she exhales slowly she unfolds the tattered picture. Almost falling apart from age, a young proud man looks back at her, showing the calm confidence of a soldier doing his second and last tour.

A bulky older man in a top hat, dressed formally in black, peeks through the gap of a missing board in the fence. One small drop of sweat begins tunneling between his shoulders. Heart racing, he's watching the side of a storefront, a café. He's breathing slow as not to wake up the hibernating bear inside of him. He has been thinking about this moment ever since his deployment overseas, it has to be perfect. Being a prisoner of war sure gives you time to think and obsess over details he thinks, smiling wearily and shaking his head slowly.

She still maintains and oozes of that aura of purity she always been exuding with Her every movement. Just dreaming about her sometimes managed to get him through the nights of horror, those he have tried so hard to forget. Taking the first trembling step, the bear wakes up, the petrified state of excitement shatters and his momentum carries him forward. Around the fence, he takes aim like he is straddling a torpedo that starts carrying him towards the café. Towards Her.

At first she doesn't notice. Then, in her peripheral vision something sub-conscious in her detects the very essence of what she waited 30 years for, what she wasted her youth for, what her life is worth living for. Rising up, heart racing, she accidentally tips over the cup of tea, sending a wave of old grey across the table. Ending up pooling around the ketchup bottle standing mid-table. Ecstatic, not caring about the weird and surprised looks she gets from the few scattered people in the café, she starts moving for the door. Seeing him more and more clearly, still walking with confidence. Still with his boy-ish grin. Still the same person she waved goodbye to so many years ago, not expecting to see him again. A hard hug, a flurry of clothes, tears, emotions and surprised bystanders applauding, the stars aligned and the universe clicked in exactly the right place. 'Welcome home'.