A LEAP OF THE EARLY BIRD

What still burned within...

The anguish that fills the heart when trust is betrayed has many layers. Because trust, once given, has the power to transform a wounded heart and allow it to open. But for a heart whose trust had been betrayed? That level of pain goes deeper than the superficial level of pain. No. That sort of pain has the power to turn a trusting heart into stone. Unless... Unless that heart still hopes it may some day beat for that same love again...

Can sat at his mountain home, alone, and more lonely than he ever felt in his life. His mountain home felt cold and no longer offered any solace. How was it possible that he ever brought Sanem to see this place? How was it possible for him to ever have brought her here? Was it a whim of a feeling? No. It was more than that. So much more... For the first time in his entire life he forgot what fear of trusting was. Sure, Sanem was a bundled storm of everything he was unable to describe. But she brought peace to his life. Somehow, through all of the mayhem she caused everywhere, she brought him balance. Going further than this, and quietly admitting that she completed the missing pieces of his existence, he knew what she meant to him. Everything...

As young and new as their love was, it filled him with hope for each coming day. For a man who planned every smallest detail of his day, he began to take each day by day as they came to him. For a man who pre-calculated each step of all his past relationships, he opened up to the possibilitied and hope that a new day could offer. And now... Now that hope was gone. She was gone. His trust in her was gone as well. But, damned if he was brave enough to admit it - his love for her was NOT gone. He felt it as deep as he felt the pain of finding out she may not have been the person he took her for. He wondered if she ever was that person? That Sanem? She told him she was still there. She was still that Sanem. She made a mistake. But she was still there. And the worst part of it all was that he still felt here there. As vivid and raw in his heart as he did just this morning. She was still there, in his heart. Still there, in his soul. Still there, in every tear that he dared not to shed.

The flame of the fire he sat by offered no warmth. It couldn't have. His body was as cold and as still as the moment he sat in his living room and listened to Sanem's plea and the moment he told her it was over. How could it be over? His mind and heart raced to find and make sense of what he just went through. And yet, looking at the photographs of Sanem that he took himself, the only thing that made sense was the fact that he still loved her. She captured his mind the moment they kissed at the opera. She captured his curiousity the moment their eyes met at Fikri Harika. Looking at the photographs, every memory of each moment that they shared came to him now, one after another. Throwing the photographs into the flame did nothing, except forever instilling that image in his mind. He did not possess Sanem's photographic memory, but he did not need it. Those images were forever instilled in his heart because of the emotions he felt in each moment they shared.

He stopped at one photograph. The last one in his hand. But it was the first one he ever took of her. A vision of innocence, she was that day of the photoshoot at his house. Clad in a white dress, with a crown of white flowers. How could he have predicted that that day he would hear her say words to him that captured his heart? How could she have known that just a few words she said that evening told him what he was not only surprised to hear but also happy to hear? "If You want me to stay, I will stay". "If You want me to leave, I will leave". That was the first time she said those words to him. In that moment he realized she may feel something more for him than just respect for her superior. Something more beyond her own boundaries. And his as well. And even though he told her to leave, she stayed in his heart. No, he would not throw that photo into the flame. He couldn't. He hadn't had the courage to do so.

The fact that she was somewhere out there, in as much pain as he was in right now, only added more pain to his heart. He knew, nay, he hoped that she felt as hurt as he was. Because if she did, that would meant she felt something for him. It would mean that underneath all the lies she told, there was a part of her that may have loved him. Even in the smallest of parts. Because even though he knew that his trust in her might have been gone, the love he felt for her would live in him forever. What still burned in him, as real as the fire he was looking into, was the love for her, as strong as ever. If he only knew that at the very same time she sat by the edge of Bosphorus and relived each and every moment they shared with the rawness of her photographic memory. She sat alone, lonely, hopeless, and yearning for his love to come back to her...