(four ways to lose the love of your life)
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(i lost her on a sunny day.)
(it’s a secret how this happened, but a bit obviously glaring – one moment she was here, the next, she was gone. she said with roses and flowers and pretty letters penned by calligraphic hand that she was desperately sorry, and all you could do was look away and laugh and think [oh my god, oh my god] because you knew the moment you looked at her face you would break down into crumbling pieces of earth and then no one would ever be able to save you. so you didn’t see her, you didn’t see her in her last moments of she&you, you didn’t see how she smiled and reached her hand out to you but stopped, retreated, and instead pushed her flowing golden hair behind her ears, let it go another day. and then she walked away in her white shoes but you didn’t see any of this because you were already jammed between the cracks of time. already frozen, already dead.)
(it’s a secret how this happened, but everybody knows.)
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no one could love her like he did. all i knew is that when i met him, he was already lonely.
“she had aphrodite in her eyes,” he would say, “and when she smiled, she held the whole world on her two lips. i felt like they would crack and crumble if i didn’t kiss them, so i did. and the taste of her just blossomed, blossomed, blossomed…”
at this point he would lean back, rest his head against the hard surface, and exhale. “i loved her. i really did love her. you believe me, don’t you?”
what could i say? “yes, yes you did.”
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they met on the corner of 4th avenue and Washington, bright neon billboards flashing in their stunned faces. when the city wasn’t enough for them they’d dance by the river, under the stars, to hear the rush of water rumble quietly beneath their feet and to breathe in the noiseless air. he spun her round, she conceded like a ballerina, oh it was a regular variety act, so quaint yet so full of love.
on Tuesday mornings, still lost in the lumbering sleep, they could embark on vast adventures, drifting through the clouds like a pair of royal cats, except once he was struck with this feeling, this awful feeling of complete loss, so he called out desperately to her, “even though it’s too late, know that I love you,” but the moment he woke up she slipped through his fingers and fell to the dust.
and he tried to remember his dream, and he tried to remember why he was crying, but the memory of her had long escaped the clutches of his mind.
-
I realized too late, way too late, too late to in fact change it all, because once I fell asleep on the phone with him, and that changed everything. He asked me, “What are you doing? (Why are you alone?)” and I merely asked, “I don’t know (but I do know it’s because I love you)” and he merely shook his head and smiled, laughed at my child-like innocence, love in wide eyes. He held my hand when it counted, but in the end, he put it down.
(“Why? Why?” I cried out, blind.
He smiled again. “Please understand that it is because although I love you, you should never love me, monster that I am.”)
The evil night went on and on, ceased to end, and ate my heart alive, beating, pumping.
