what am i to you?
you clutched the paper in your hand, eyes bloodshot and wide. you knew that if you even moved an inch, the tears would start flowing freely, like floodwaters bursting forth from a cheaply built dam. so you just sat there, stone-willed in your desire to not show even a sliver of emotion. stoic and still, your hand as immovable as sculpted metal, that absorbs rather than reflect the artificial lighting.
i stared into your eyes. they were dilated in anger, anguish. your very soul was screaming through the windows of brown. soft loamy umber, rolled into a tiny sphere and shoved into that prison of white and red. undulating and oscillating between the two colours, never mixing, refusing to blend together into pink, refusing to mellow out. they quivered and shook in that runny whiteness, like your very being was slamming against it from the other side, trying to get out, to escape reality. and for the first time since i've known you, i wavered.
a night owl bus rumbled past on the street outside. the windows grumbled in irritation, our cups trembled fearfully. gradually settling down into a resigned silence that spreads and blankets us and everything between, like a cloud of dust falling, black snow billowing after a building's scheduled demolition. i looked away, unable to hold her burning gaze. the lights inside seemed dimmer somehow, but still white and sterile, as if the photons were scalpels wielded by surgeons and they were slicing deep into my heart and mind, making me question my decisions and fuckups again and again.
instead, i looked outside to the softer, yellow glow of the lamplights that illuminated the winter darkness. somehow, outside seemed warmer than here, where your gaze accuses me, accosts me, reaches their arms out to grab at me and shake me and question me asking me why why why.
the rattle of metal on glass, grating against my flesh, pulled me back to you. your palm rested squarely on it. deep breaths, the rise and fall of your chest. i could hear the breaking and unbreaking of your heart, step by step as it was dismantled and then put back together again over and over as you, the shutters to your fibrous being resolutely pulled shut, protected your head succumbing to the echoes of it. you reached into your handbag for your pen, the fountain pen that i had gifted you, forever ago, when we were happy and content and at peace with our insecurities and imperfections.
when we had each other and thought we understood it all. of how we were still in awe at how our pieces fit perfectly together, sliding and locking into place. never to be broken and torn apart by anything, because we were made for each other and nothing, nothing could take this away from us.
i hope you're happy with her. it was no longer accusatory. no longer angry. just resigned, and beneath it all a sorrow that threatened to overwhelm. but i knew that you kept it in check, as you always did, for you and i in our last few moments.
you slid the papers across to me. our eyes met, and you smile. it wasn't one of our smiles. not the same smile you and i shared at every dinner table, no matter how bad our day had been. the same smile that i had gotten used to and taken for granted for the past 2 years. this one stretched out across your lips, like the melting canopy of alabaster snow washing down the rooftops after winter's first frost-fall. it dissipated in the glaring headlights of the car that groaned past.
the ring you always wore wasn't on your finger anymore.
goodbye. your voice cracked. that tremulous voice was so unlike you that i nearly broke out in a grin. instead, my eyes started watering.
i'm sorry. the murmur escaped my lips before i could stop myself. but my voice could not reach you in time. the bell that hung on the entrance rang a bit too cheerfully, its bright overtones twinkling and shaking the silence out of the still air in this dark cafe.
my hands moved automatically in an attempt to cover my pain and guilt. the wetness was hot to my touch, and outside i heard your sobs pierce the cold silence of the night.