You didn’t know him, but Johan knew you.

He knew you like the wind knew the sky.

he loved you like the moon loved the sea.

Johan had met you in university, as he had been studying the degree for English, and you were.. Johan couldn’t remember what you studied, but if he could, he would paint a thousand canvases of your passion and the way your eyes had sparkled with joy, because of how much you loved it.

He knew you; like the gentle comfort only the warm sun could provide.

Yet, he knew he had to let go.

Of you; who loved another man.

Of you; who did not belong to him. But as Johan watched you exchange vows with another, the unspoken words of love lingered in the air. Johan almost wanted to jump out of his seat and yell ‘I object!’ But he couldn’t, not when you looked so happy and so in love.

Yet it ended in a blink of an eye, as words of love and joy were replaced by screams of terror, Johan heard a gunshot and suddenly, his whole world had stopped as he watched you fall to the ground, your beautiful wedding dress stained in your blood and Johan couldn’t breathe as he hurriedly jumped out of his seat and ran to you, not caring if he was hit by bullets and as soon as he got close to you, he saw your ‘husband’ run away and Johan felt hurt for you, as he held you tightly in his arms and watched you bleed away.

As Johan held you, his bloody suit echoed the cost of veiled affections. He paid the price of a painful realization within the first hour of your marriage.

Johan really should have told you how he felt about you. And now, all that was left of you was a tombstone with a photo of your smiling face. Yet the photographed version of you could not ease his pain as he stood before your grave and tightly gripped his withered notebook; it was filled with so much love poems that he had wrote for you, and only you.

He could never love another as much as he loved you.