Haslemere, West-Surrey, 1980
November, chipping cold
When I think back to a day in my life when I was still unsure, you come to my mind, half-dressed with a flannel covering your sculpted front.
"Why are you crying?" You would ask.
"I don't know." I would say.
And you would leave it at that. Because you wouldn't know but I would've seen the red rims around your own eyes, too. I would know that you're just as hurting as I am, but we'd both stand there, pretending to not know the fog in the other's eyes is pain, pure and undiluted ache.
We'd drink so much that the taste would be numb on our tongue, just like a word. A word that you use too many times loses its meaning. The word for you might've been 'love'. For me, it was 'sorry'.
We said it to each other so many times, the hate inside our throats was burning our chests, pouring out through the holes it has dug through our hearts. We argued and looked at each other, conflicted, staring and staring until our tea grew cold and the dawn became dusk.
I want to reach back in time, time — something I have hated and still do, but need more than anything in the moments you look out through the tinted windows, unaware of whether I stay in the house or not, a cigarette between your forefingers, smoke through your lips and nose, the ash falling on your lap while you stay aloof.
Reach back in time and grasp our still full hearts until I squeeze them and watch the blood pour down my hands so we don't get the chance to live this way in the future, living death.
And I'd watch as you finally realise the huge pile of ash on your trousers and move a tired hand to wipe it off, watch it all fall off like smog amid December when we'd be too giddy from kissing each other, heavy breaths pouring out like our favourite cigarette smoke. But we don't do that anymore, all we do is fight.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait, for the day it all goes down.
So I look into your eyes one last time, catching the grey turmoil in my own before you avert them, store the look deep inside the casket of my heart, and begin the work of falling, out, out, out of love. Your most favourite word.
What I don't know then, is that I'd do it again the next day, and the next. But whatever I try, I wouldn't be able to.
Love was always your word, mine was sorry. It lost meaning for you, never for me.
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