This is for You Know Who
My heart is pounding. My palms are sweating. I hope she doesn’t feel the wetness against her cool skin. My eyesight is compromised. I cannot see anything that is not her hand resting in mine. Her gaze is steady on the silver screen, but mine flits everywhere, trying not to alight upon her for too long, lest she realize my discomfort. And it is uncomfortable. So terribly uncomfortable. There is a hope there that makes my chest ache and moan, like blustery winds through the eaves of an old oak tree, and I cannot stop it from plunging through every nerve ending and pricking my fingers where hers are.
I hate this. All I wanted was to watch a movie, to enjoy a simple reproduction of one of my favourite books with my best friend. Instead I got this building scream in my head and blurry eyes and tight smile. I never imagined that the phrase ‘love hurts’ could ever mean physical pain. I thought it was the billowing desire whenever she walked past me in the hallways or the sting of jealousy that accompanied every smile gifted to someone else. Not this, never this. This dagger hanging above my throat while nails hammer into my skull and thin twine binds flesh tightly at my wrists and ankles. Never did I stop to wonder if it might mean a frothy bubble in my mouth where the poison waits to slide down to my stomach.
I am in Hell and she is all grace and smooth edges and tilted smile. The smell of burnt popcorn does nothing to distract me and the soft polyester seats do nothing to ease the ache in my bones. Light catches at her blonde waves and blue-lit eyes, and my nails are being pulled out with pliers.
She has no idea how much pain she causes me. She doesn’t realize that the one thing I wish so desperately for in the darkest hours of the night is the thing she can never give me. An action as simple as holding her hand takes all my strength and courage, because I know the limits of her love and I cannot limit mine.
And now, even though she is far from me, gone from sight and sound, her touch still stains my hand red, the edges a charred black where skin has been burnt and curled away. Every night her face persists at the periphery of my mind, evading direct line of sight, but refusing to disappear entirely. Now I have to go through the days pretending she never existed, that my heart had not been cracked and glued, but instead remained healthy and whole. Some days it is worse and I find my heart yearning for her touch just once more, or the wafting smell of chlorine as she drifts past.
The reality is that her name forever remains stapled on my decaying heart. I am crippled under the weight of it, crouching over like some depraved animal fighting for survival. I fear I may soon be eaten alive, after all these years without her, how is it I cannot move on? How is it that every day that goes by is one more day I have to live without her and how is that so hard to accept? The echo of her voice feels like a prayer in my head, like I’m begging a god I never believed in to give her back to me.
Love may hurt, but it’s all that’s keeping me here.
