by Lindsay Griffiths
This pain I fight to dismiss as trivial in light of global tragedy. And yet, I ache.
He walked me to my car like he used to. We embraced in the cold night, embracing too our broken history, keeping each other warm. I looked up into his eyes. I didn’t speak, but my gaze gave me away, told on me, snitched; I still loved him. So we kissed. I melted and bent under the weight of my emotions, his soft lips, the warm familiarity, the passion surging through me. I wasn’t just aroused, I was enamored.
But I could see he didn’t feel the same. I could feel it.
As I pulled him in by the back of the neck, by the shoulder, by the waist, he didn’t resist, but he didn’t pull in either. He just inhaled my love without offering any in return, suffocating me, emptily accepting my kisses as I desperately tried to remind him with my mouth, with my body, of what we had once felt before, of what I was feeling now. I made myself sick, wanting him but nauseated that he did not want me, still holding on, still hoping for my affections to be returned. But something had been altered within him, though not within me. My very soul still yearned to be united with his,
but he was just fine without me.
I let him go, knowing my efforts were futile, knowing I would depress myself if I continued, knowing that though his kiss gave me bliss, mine gave him nothing more than would a stranger’s. I let him go, preferring to weather the chill of the night than to be warm in his arms while having to weather the chill of his indifference. I let him go because his kiss began to hurt more than heal, it began to burn instead of melt me. His kiss began to siphon from me all of the joy that it once gave me. Holding onto him, my soul procured its innermost sadness, and tears gathered at the threshold of my eyes. My body was readying itself to mourn for a love that was now surely lost. So I had to let him go.
I smiled up at him, hoping the dark would hide the melancholy in my face. I got into my car and sat in the driver’s seat, door ajar. He leaned in and held my chin between his thumb and the knuckle of his index finger. He kissed me one last time.
Stop.
You’re not fooling me. Don’t do this because you think it will make me happy. Don’t pretend you adore me like I do you.
I love it for a moment, but then I realize it’s all fabricated,
all fake,
all a lie,
a rouse, and then
I hate it.
I hate you.
I ache from this dolorous struggle between simultaneously adoring and abhorring you.
