Without a Word
You are slowly slipping, slipping from my grasp. I light a cigarette, only to let it burn. The scent fills a tiny sliver of your absence, helping to ease the throbbing pain that beats in time with my heart, uneven and stuttering.
Your eyes. They once held promises and passion. Now, they are clouded with suffering and uncertainty. I can see you beneath those deep green pools, screaming to be heard, pounding beneath the surface, just trying to breakthrough, to turn to me and love me; love me again.
I know you are running, running away. I wish you would stay. It never has to end, it never has to fade. The smell of the cigarette is gone. I light another one.
You speak so softly, the words almost escape unnoticed, but I reach out for them and hold them to me, before they get lost in the breath of the breeze. “I love you,” you say. You said. I listen now, the breeze flutters through the curtains, but no words reach me. There are no words left to hold.
Lies. I fell for them, all of them. I have a habit of falling. The fall: always so perfectly crafted. I long for the feeling of the fall. Everything around me blurs and everything passes by so quickly that I don’t take notice. I feel nothing but the exhilaration, the bliss. If only the fall didn’t have to come to such a devastatingly abrupt and destructive end.
“I never loved you,” you say. I know those words are honest. But, it doesn’t matter. One word from you and I’d be at your side, because I never lied. “I love you.”
I’m unsteady now, disoriented from the fall. I know you watched me plunge, eyes wide open and fearless into your love. I know you saw me come crashing down. You didn’t break my fall, you never even tried. I try to find my bearings, to adjust to this new world, a world where your lies aren’t blurring around me and I can see clearly once again. But the pain of the clarity is unbearable and I crumble.
The new, glaring reality, matched with my endless cries leave my head pounding, a hammer slamming the truth into my mind, never to be forgotten. I cry alone, in a heap on the kitchen floor. You left a hole in my heart, but it still beats; perhaps a little less steady, but it’s beating. I realize now that, like the beating of my heart, I cannot stop. My cries fade away with the last of the cigarette smoke.
Truth. Whiskey, once, for just a moment, took that guarded look from your gaze. “I hate to be alone. Stay with me,” you said. I saw you. I stayed. You left.
It’s been months, but even now I catch myself listening to the breeze as it drifts by, hoping to hear your voice, to hear those words again. I’m more cautious now. I always look when I fall, to see what I’ll go crashing into at the end.
I saw you once. I was getting my lemon tea, two sugars. You got a coffee, one cream, one sugar. When your eyes caught mine, I searched for the lies. You smiled. I felt my knees weaken. Still, I was blind to your lies, but I didn’t need to see them anymore; I had felt them. I left that day, without a word.
