Two children run through the forest. 
A boy and a girl.
You know how this ends.

The girl is a scholar with her pink dress muddied and torn,
The boy is a trickster with gapped smile and sky-blue overalls.
They're in love.

She tells him they'll get married with the glaze of a dream in her eyes.
He spits in her hair and grabs her hand, wrapping a hastily-made bracelet around her wrist.
And he drags her down the dirt path.

The smell of earth lingers in their noses, 
Twigs adorn their heads like crowns as they rule their kingdom.
They kiss in the patterned light of the sun underneath the trees.

She falls for him just as he falls for the world, 
He only shows his love for nature with her, 
And that is what finishes the deal.

They grow up. 
He stays the same, 
She doesn't.

A lonely boy wanders around the woods in overalls and metal-bracketed teeth.
A girl sits in a classroom with a pencil propped behind her ear. 
Solemn music plays as she looks to her worn bracelet.

Years pass.
In the same woods sits a man in khakis and sandals, 
Carving a familiar face into the oak.

A twig snaps. Shadows shift. 
The man's eyes glance upward, 
And there, in the light of dawn, is a scholar in her navy robe.

"Wow..." He says, standing slowly. 
"You can talk," she says.
She runs toward him and he lifts her by the hips.

They embrace, wanting to catch up but unable to find the words. 
He is overcome with anger
Just as she is with sadness.

He asks where she's been, and all she can say is school,
Her voice breaks like the fragile leaves under her feet, 
And he turns away.

But, of course, as lovers tend to do,
They are unable to stay apart for long, and he forgives as she forgets. 
They link hands and walk through the forest again. 

The credits roll. 
They walk and walk until they are but tiny specs on the screen, 
But somehow you know they are still grasping onto one another's hand.

Isn't that how cliché's work?