A Romantic Novel

To be a romantic novel that never wants to end…
A lament to the death of my romantic youth. Why don’t I love Off Campus and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before? I used to dream in romance, the reluctant frumpy maiden plucked from obscurity by a prince in disguise. I was Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping, desperate to be part of the world of the man she secretly admires, only to find love not with him though through him. I was the spirited heroine of Shania Twain’s, “no one needs to know’ secretly plotting my dream life with a tall, dark and handsome man. I was half the lyric to the tune; you and I collide. Elizabeth Bennett slowly realizing Mr. Darcy is her intended.

The magic died somewhere at the intersection of middle age and reality. Not a delicate unraveling, but the veil of night revealing the ugliness of day, a reflection that shattered the looking glass of youth. No magic potion, no yarns of spells to spin. No true love’s kiss. Reality was a steel man, maladaptively ruthless in its hindrances. I still remember when thirty was old. The fields have grown over and thirty is the past, a wilderness of buried moments and missed opportunities. No Eli Merritt to marry or Devon Lecusken to ride off with.
​
The ugly duckling never became the swan and the meet-cute never materialized on the street of serendipity. Love was a melody never composed, not even a bad note on my guitar to draw lovelorn tears. Hope became a headache, and dreams cardiac arrests.

The stories became torture.

It wasn’t that Cupid missed me. He just never showed up, not even to punish me for hubris, for daring to think I was the subject of love’s fancy. He was a racist zombie in the Kay & Peele sketch. For all was fair for fair maidens and not for thee; Lucy, a black star in a night sky. A maid whom there was none to praise and very few to love.

And yet there is yearning, a strong desire that lingers between North and South. Look back. Look back, it pleads like John Thornton, appealing to my sensibility.
​
 Don’t look back in anger makes sense.