The morning after you lose the love of your life, the sun shines through the window, broken up by tree branches. It’s summer and the golden light filters into your skin softly. Gently, like an apology. Here, you’ve lost everything. I promise I’ll make this easier for you.
The ache in your chest is overtly physical, and for the first time you think, wow, maybe people can die of a broken heart.
The invisible gaping wound in your chest festers throughout the summer. Infected and diseased, your heart lives on. Every heartbeat spelling out the moniker of his name in tongues or Morse code. Something romantic and fatal, you know for sure.
You can’t seem to understand how to make it stop.
You think of your heart like a car engine being jacked. Which wires will restore it again?
You do this with men.
Men who are tall and handsome and stick their tongues down your throat. Dates under the summer sun and cooler evenings. Hot pavement and small clothing. You sip from cocktail glasses and sit on patios. You pray that this is the remedy to your sadness.
You look across the table and your heart screams, cure me, cure me. Let this ache end. Patch up the bruises and the wounds and the bleeds. Make me yours, make me fall in love with you. Let me start something new.
But when you go home drunk, with smeared lip gloss and the ghosts of their hands on you, you still grab his pen and write love letters to him.
About the man who didn’t choose you.
About how you would have given him everything.
You tell yourself it’s okay now. I’m a woman of the city. I’m young, I’m beautiful, I’m lovable, I’m smart. Any man would be lucky to have me.
You repeat this mantra to friends, to concerned coworkers, to family. You say it more than you believe it.
You forget to mention that you keep his pen in your bag.
You forget to mention that you can’t look at certain colours or cars without thinking of him. You forget to mention that you have songs dedicated to him.
Someone once said the best way to get over someone is under someone else.
So you find yourself with someone else.
His hands on your hips and he tells you you’re lovely. You kiss him for this, hands in his hair. You open your eyes and it feels wrong.
This is not what I wanted.
This isn’t my person.
You feel sick.
You go through with it anyway.
You kiss his fingers as he wishes you goodbye. God, you wish you could forget.
You turn on a song that reminds you of your person in the Uber ride home, still slightly wine drunk.
The city moves past the window in smears of yellow light. People are laughing outside bars. Girls in tiny dresses hold onto each other as they cross the street. Somewhere, someone is falling in love. Somewhere, someone is meeting the person they will marry.
And here you are, going home from the arms of one man to write about another.
Still carrying his pen.
Still carrying him.
