Wait For Me
by
When Amelia was six, her father hit her. He called her all sorts of mean names and told her that she’d never amount to anything. She’d cried hard, as children do, and ran as far away from him as she could get. She didn’t understand what a ‘witch’ was or why it was such a terrible thing. She only understood that she hurt and that it was her daddy’s fault.
Later she learned that he’d been drowning the disappointment of losing his job with alcohol. And later, he said he was sorry.
But it was too late, because everything had changed.
***
When she was ten, her mother died. Her father put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly, telling her everything would be okay.
But still, her mother lay cold and still in the coffin, and Amelia couldn’t understand how it could ever be okay while she still laid there.
***
When she was fifteen, she felt magick for the first time. She had been angry at her friend for abandoning her in favor of a boy, and all of a sudden the pencil on the desk in front of her levitated five feet off the desk before flinging itself at the wall and embedding itself an inch deep.
She had a hard time explaining to her father how it had gotten there. But no matter how she tried, he called her an evil witch, the spawn of Satan, and unfit to live.
***
When she was sixteen, she kissed a girl for the first time. Her friend, the one who abandoned her at fifteen, had decided that perhaps boys weren’t the most important things. Amelia wasn’t at all surprised; she’d known what she was since she’d been fourteen.
When she and Amber finished kissing, Amelia smiled at her and stepped away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t love you. I’m waiting for somebody else.”
Amber had been crestfallen, and Amelia hadn’t been able to save the friendship, but still, she wasn’t sorry. She knew that Amber wasn’t the one. She knew with a certainty that she couldn’t describe that it was important that she wait for the one.
So she did.
***
At forty-seven, Amelia met Alyssa. The red-headed witch looked over at her one day at work, and Amelia knew that her wait was over. Though Alyssa was at least eight years younger than her, she knew. Alyssa was the one.
***
When she was eighty-three, Amelia lay in bed with Alyssa and remembered. Blonde hair tangled with red on a soft cotton pillow. Magickal energies weaving intimately together until they were so tightly braided not even death could break them. Images of fangs and bullets and a white shirt spattered with blood. Black hair and green energy and overwhelming grief and rage.
None of it mattered anymore. It was so long ago, so far away, so much removed from her. But in her crumbling mind she remembered something important for the first time. A promise, made long, long ago.
‘I’ll find you, baby. I’ll always find you.’
And she remembered the unspoken answer, yet unmarred in her memory after all this time, both these lifetimes. “And I will always be waiting for you, my Willow.”