Twentieth.

     They could have easily crossed over. But she let one more cab zip past. She was incapable of denying herself those few more seconds of holding his hand on this side of the road. This side, where the sun shined. This side, where at some point of time, it will set too.
     His eyes stole her breath everytime she wanted to let him know how weak and strongly devastating love could be. He would have believed in his integrity even if she did so, and promised her with a love for lifetime. She no more wanted that. To base the beauty of her world on the dreams of those promises being true. It felt good to know that her happiness depended solely on the momentary truth, on the pleasant and undeniable present.
     It was important to gather her heart one more time, even if it was to be broken again. She hoped he will wait as long as it took to do so. With that charm hooked up his sleeve, he seemed to be an end to the indefinite search. The sun might set. But he had already started meaning so much to her. She thought she'll trick the daylight. Trap his love, in the need of darker days, if they ever are meant to come.

Nineteenth.

     She found the dried rose in her eight standard history textbook. History was never a dry subject and roses never really symbolised love of any kind for her, but they were just kids back then. Kids, so much in love. Since then, there had been multiple lifes lived, for she had learnt that no two worlds existed simultaneously. You have to constantly choose. She learnt to adjust and accomodate a huge world- when her dad transferred and shifted, when school got over the second and the last time, when medical school started. Phew, huge part of life has been lived it seems, like almost twenty years done right.
     The rose had yellowed to the lowest petal hanging by it. Having loved and lost many times ever since, probably the rose was kept so that he would stir her memory even years later. It brought only a smile onto her lips, he is in some other part of the country now, living his dream, she thought. She was serious with yet someone else a while back, but it had all ended the way she never had thought it will. She never had thought it will end, actually. But the thorns were almost the same brown when she had kept it;  according to what she remembered.  The good things leave our minds and go away in our process of moving on, but the bad things, they stay there always. Teaching you all that shouldn't be done. Because maybe not doing the wrong has become even more important than doing the right. The world looks into how you shouldn't be, always. She was happy with the way she was. People around her loved her, and she loved herself too. She wondered whether she would have been the same, if she wouldn't have broken or been broken all these many times. Every reconstruction needs a destruction. Theres a reason for why things happen. Its impossible for the river to change its course on its own. Bigger rivers require earthquakes for doing what obstructions could do for smaller rivers. There is a creation hidden in every calamity that befalls. Destroying us is life's way of helping us better itself. There cannot be a new unless the old is wiped clean. Perhaps she'll continue keeping the dried rose in there. It won't hurt ;)