This is the end.
I can’t look at him, can’t watch him put on his shoes or
collect his phone, his wallet, his keys, so I look down at the floor. The
lighting is all wrong for this, it’s soft and warm and romantic. It’s lighting for a bottle of wine, for long and deep conversation, for a comforting
embrace, a shared laugh, a slow kiss, an urgent touch, a magnetic pull. But instead,
it’s casting softly over a goodbye, as tears slide down my cheeks while Chris
Martin cruelly serenades us from my Bluetooth speaker.
Come up to meet
you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how
lovely you are
I had to find you,
tell you I need you
Tell you I set you
apart
Tell me your
secrets, and ask me your questions
Oh, let's go back to
the start
Our second August. I’m wearing a red t-shirt, the one he
loves to remind me that I once wore inside out. We’ve opened a second bottle of
wine as we weave in and out of one conversation and another, off on a tangent,
circling back again, the hours effortlessly falling away until we suddenly stumble
into a place of grief. He asks me to play songs that make him sad. I understand
this, this need to sit in the pain, to let it ebb and flow, to stoke it at certain
times and extinguish it at others. I play his songs. I caress his hand, rub his
back. And when the wave knocks him over, I sit on his lap, facing him, and wrap
my arms around him as tightly as I can.
“I’m in it with you,” I say silently with my body.
“I know,” I say softly with my mouth.
My head pounds, from wine, from tears, from reality as they
all wrap around my temples and squeeze like a vice. He’s standing before me. I
look at his shoulder, I look at his arm, I look anywhere but his eyes. I have
nothing left to say, nothing that won’t slice me with its finality. Not I’ll
miss you. Not I’ll be thinking of you. Not I love you. Certainly not goodbye.
Tell me you love
me, come back and haunt me
Oh, and I rush to
the start
Running in circles,
chasing our tails
Coming back as we
are
It’s February at home, but it feels like a mid-June night in
Florida. We sit at an outdoor bar along the beach, the warm air swirling
sweetly around us, white twinkle lights strung above our heads. I turn to look
at him and he’s smiling, his eyes bright, the black of the ocean
indistinguishable from the black of the night sky behind him. He leans towards
me, grinning, staring intently at me for a moment, my stomach flip-flopping
from the warmth he’s giving off as he says, “This is the best night of my life.”
My brain reminds me that he’s drunk, but my heart whispers, “You know…he might
be in love with you.” I order another drink to wash away the panic I feel as I
realize I might love him, too. A few hours later, when that drink comes back up
and he holds my hair and rubs my back and calls me sweetie, I know. He does
love me. And I love him right back.
I wrap my arms around him one last time. He holds me tightly
as I bury my face into his neck and breathe him in, his skin ever intoxicating.
I feel his body pressed against me, and my own responds like the strike of a
match, blissfully unaware of what is happening. My skin aches for the feel of his,
as it always does, my desire for him a constant. My tears fall faster, my breath
catching in my throat.
Nobody said it was
easy
It's such a shame
for us to part
Nobody said it was
easy
No one ever said it
would be so hard
Oh, take me back to
the start
It’s cold for early April. I scan the bar, hoping I’ll recognize
him from his pictures. He stands and gives me a hug. He’s attractive, he’s
charming, and he knows it. He wants to be sure I do, too. And so I think, dismissively,
“I’ve met this guy a hundred times before.” But I’m wrong. He talks about his
sons, he talks about losing his parents, we talk in generalities about the
deterioration of our respective marriages. He talks about things the way I do, he cares
about things that I do, he feels things like I do. And when he touches my arm,
and then, later, my knee, the electricity radiates off of us. We linger in the
parking lot, under the soft glow of the streetlamp. We can’t stop kissing.
I pull away, brushing aside tears only to have more fall,
eyes cast downward.
“I can’t watch you go,“ I say, and with that I turn away
from him, leaving him by the door. I walk down the hall to my bedroom, embarrassed
by the sound of my own crying. I stretch across the foot of the bed, curling
into a ball, tears streaming sideways into my ear, into my hair.
Nobody said it was
easy
Oh it's such a
shame for us to part
He's telling me to look at him, his face just inches above mine, his breath warm and sweet, and when I do I know nothing in the world could ever
be better than being naked with him in my bed when he is looking through
me and I am looking back; it’s after midnight and we are singing, loudly: Thunder
Road, In Your Eyes, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant; he is taking my face in his hands and telling me, his
voice thick with emotion, “DO NOT give up on us"; he’s sitting beside me at a crowded bar, suddenly leaning in to kiss me; he is slipping his
hand into mine as we make our way through the crowd; we are sitting in the window watching
a thunderstorm; we are drinking coffee on my couch; we are clearing dinner from
the table; we are waiting for the check; we are talking; we are kissing; we are
yelling; we are laughing; we are fucking; we are crying; we are falling...
Nobody said it was
easy
No one ever said it
would be so hard
I'm going back to
the start
I hear the door close.
And that is the end.
