Reflections

(Originally posted at IndieInk, December 2009.)

I don’t know if it’s the weather or the time of year or some combination, or if it’s even any of those things as much as it’s just me, but for some reason I can’t get you off my mind tonight. The cold air, the soaking rain, the reflection of the holiday lights in the black puddles on the pavement all conspire to remind me of that last night. The night that I dressed up in my black wrap dress, wearing the necklace that your mother gave to me the previous weekend, wrapped myself up in my cornflower blue wool coat, and headed out into the cold and damp night, warmed by thoughts of you. The night that I looked at you from across the restaurant, closed my umbrella, and smiled, not knowing what heartbreak was lying in wait for me on the other side of the room.

I don’t know if you know how you broke me. I am, however, certain that I never told you. I never said how I stopped being able to listen to that song that you used to play for me, over and over again, while we’d lie in bed. I never said that I went from cursing god to thanking him for you to cursing him again. I never said that despite all the tragedies I’ve encountered, both large and small, losing you was the metaphorical last straw, the thing that pushed me over the edge into the abyss from which I struggle to escape every single day. Although, in retrospect, maybe I never said any of these things because they’re not true, even if they feel true on a night like tonight.

I don’t know why you came back, all those months later, telling me that you loved me then, that you loved me still. And after that I imagined that you would eventually grab me and kiss me and tell me that it was all going to be okay, that we could make it work, somewhere, somehow. But you never did, and I’ve grown tired of waiting. Would it have made it all better? Would it have made me all better?

I don’t know.