I: SHE SAYS…
I turn around in bed, wanting to lay my hand on his shoulder, willing him to turn around, look me in the eye and tell me he doesn’t love me anymore. I reach out almost, tears building in my eyes when I hear him wipe his tears on the pillow. I bite my lip to keep myself from telling him I love him still, that I always have, but I have said that a zillion times in the past three days. If he’d wanted, he could have said it back. But he didn’t. He didn’t say what I wanted to hear, nay, what I needed to hear and that was that. I will leave soon, I tell myself, coz that’s what he wants.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Suggested read: 12 love lessons from ‘The Notebook’
He watches me drag my suitcase across the hall and does not say a word. If only he’d just say he loves me and cannot be without me, I’d change everything. Everything. All over again. But I hang on to the silence of an eon in the hope that it would become what I want it to be. It doesn’t. I leave.
As my car hits the road, my mind wanders back to his ‘come close to me’ embrace, my eyes still see his ‘stay forever’ eyes and my heart leaps out to fly to the heart I knew beats in sync with mine. I know. I just know that he loves me and won’t say it. I do not know what is keeping him from it but I do know that he does – with every breath in his being – he does. He loves me.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
My eyes couldn’t be wrong about the gaze that screamed I love you, my heart couldn’t misjudge the beat it filled in his and my lips couldn’t not taste the wish on that last kiss – the wish that I’d stay. But the words didn’t come. He had held my hand a long time, like letting go would mean letting go of all our dreams, all our promises, and I could feel the cold glass of his fear pierce through my skin, like he was afraid to lose me, and I, stung by the sharp pain of the fear that he wouldn’t stop himself from losing me.
That pain won. He didn’t stop himself from losing me. He didn’t stop me. He let me leave.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
I wonder if he’s still standing by the window, watching the faint outline the tyres have made in the mud or if he’s crept in between the cold sheets in our dark room, watching the doorknob blood-stained from where my hand had touched it last, after he let go my fingers. I wonder if he’s digging his fork aimlessly into the food we shared each night or simply, curling up with Bruno under the blanket they can both smell me on. I wonder if he’s watching our favorite show on TV and missing our debates, or simply, staring at the screen, oblivious of what the characters are saying. I wonder if Bruno’s refusal to eat is reminding him of me or the beep of the laundry replaying for him my shout out to get it in. I wonder if he’s looking at his phone, hoping to receive a call from me, a text even, just so my name makes my ghost in the place not so uncanny. I wonder if my memories are like a force field around him, gripping him at exponential speed. I wonder…
The driver asks for directions at the next turn and words do not leave my choked throat…
Suggested read: Why none of us need the forever love…
II: HE SAYS…
She left. I lost her. I loved her and I lost her.
I had my chance with her and I blew it. I had another lost and found chance with her and I blew it too.
That night, I knew she was crying into her pillow. I heard those muffled sobs and yet, I kept my hand from reaching out to her, my lips from kissing her nose, all cute and red from crying.
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
I saw her stop at the door and turn to look at me with teary eyes and I said nothing. I heard the plea of her heart as she stepped out of the house we’d known as home, and yet, I remained unmoved.
I could grab her and kiss her and take back all the hurtful things I’d said with just the three words she craved to hear and God knows I wanted to, but I didn’t.
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
I watched her car pull away from the apartment, the tyres splashing the mud up against the walls, as if in protest against the walls I had built around myself to keep her out. I watched the car vanish into the distance, like some force had led it to speed away and I felt angry that that force was me. I stood in the balcony to face my decision until I was unable to bear the ruthlessness of it all. I crept back into bed, but the sheets were cold. Her side of the bed was still crumpled and I traced the faint outline of her form on the bed, as if wanting to touch some part of her that was still with me. I lay in the dark, staring into space until the door creaked and Bruno crept in. As I watched him slide in through the door, I recalled her petite frame in the doorway, waiting for me to make her stay.
I fill Bruno’s food bowl and fill my plate with something, but the stubborn canine refuses to eat and I toss aside my own plate after I have disfigured it enough with my fork. Bruno smells her on the blanket and springs onto the bed and I am just glad to have someone to curl up against in the cold and dark of the night. Her smell revives her in a hazy silhouette against the night in the room and sleep is miles away from me – perhaps, traveling with the only dream I ever had. I switch on the TV to distract myself and on comes the show we watched together while she warned me about crumbs in bed! I don’t know what happens on the show and I don’t care much about the laundry, for she isn’t here to remind me to get it in or even to show me the ‘correct’ way of folding ’em. I look at my phone half-wishing her name would flash on it, but tonight, she won’t be calling me. I won’t be calling her. Not now. Not ever.
As the realization sinks in, I hold onto my T-shirt she wore last and catch a whiff of her, and wonder how I’d LIVE without my air to breathe!
Suggested read: How I am getting over you
III: Not meant to be?
It’s been over a year. Friends tell me it was not meant to be, but that’s no consolation to a broken heart that still loves him with all its pieces taped back together in a make-do. The reasons why this is not meant to be or why he thought we couldn’t be do NOT phase me. Even if I could go back in time and change this bit or undo it, I wouldn’t.
I would do it again because it feels too right to ever be wrong. How can it be wrong when the moment I talk of him, an uncontrollable flood gushes from the part of my heart I know I left with him…
The part that is his and shall remain his…
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
Even after we have gone from strangers to friends to lovers to strangers again… only to re-find each other again as friends who’d be by each other in a heartbeat, be lovers again… and be strangers all over again…
Because it was necessary to be ripped apart when you’d given the other an access to the most intimate parts of you, to get up stronger than before, even if on scraped knees – to make good of the promise that loving is forever. Coz love never dies, only moves onward to wherever it has to go and whatever it has to become…
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
Maybe we’d become friends again… maybe even lovers, or maybe, we’d find love in someone else and be reminded of each other when we love this new ‘someone’ in our lives…
Coz maybe our great romance is not fated for a happily ever after, but our love, in its earnestness, is meant to be… forever…
Coz in a true love story, the time together may be clipped, but the love lives on… ever after…
Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
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