aftermath

Get out. You broke somebody's heart, so now you have to leave. It's been six weeks since we spoke real words, not simply online IMs or cellular feelings. But still, you won't leave. You've coloured in a part of my brain- how I wish I wouldn't continue tracing the outlines of memories we created. Slowly the colour fades but it pulsates back to life at the quietest whisper of connection. And you send blank emails, call in silence, log on and never speak. I wish that you would just fade more quickly. Probably I should fill in that space with another, shove you further down to burning inferno- all the better for you to incinerate, my dear. All the better so that song lyrics don't colour me blue and your passing image doesn't make me fall apart. One day you shall pass. One day you will be that long-ago memory I can't recall. Only the foggy semblance of a colour. In this silence, while the echo fades, I wonder, I replay; moments shift their meaning now that you're gone. I should just let go, forget you. Fill the void with shallow meetings, meaningless contacts and eventually another. For now I can't stop thinking of you just like in the beginning I couldn't. But, now, I don't exist to you. You've moved on, soon to forget. I wonder if we were ever together, if your eyes wandered, if your heart fled, if your body lied. I was left building a bridge connected to no other side, bricks falling into the river. And I, blinded, deaf, continued working, ignoring the mighty jets of water as it swallowed my work. I remained enraptured, mixing mortar, laying bricks, thinking I was getting close to connection. And the bricks continued to collapse with a crash until I started to hear the boom and started to feel the water's spray against my face. Standing on my side of shore, looking across and seeing vague figures in the distance. Possible only imagining, what I wanted to see but couldn't.

---

And I saw you, not recognizing at first. Your hair shorter, your face sadder than I remember. Perhaps I preserved and retouched the past and placed you in another space thata did not ever exist. And here you are in profile, walking, staring, head unswivelling. And you sai nothing. I said nothing too. In our dialogue of silence we communicated, leaving everything to possibility and out imagination. I fell apart, if only on the surface. You made no effort to say hello or even acknowledge my presence. It was as if you were making a conscious effort not to. And I watched you in your inertia, walking. I too said nothing.

You aren't worth it. I had forgotten that since the end of you and I, I have had memories not involving you, or word of you. You have not contaminated my life. In fact you've made me grow, and now, I am much happier.

But still I cannot let it fall to break and fall to silence without understanding. It will be up to me to ask you why and just to say hello. Not out of need to feel a bridge between you and I but to look at you from a distance, just out of touch and not exchange meaningless concluding phrases. It will be to understand- even if I pretend to hate you I find you fascinating- entranced by the glinting steel and vermillion as it exits from my fresh wounds.