Where Love Once Grew

Like a crab he hid within the walls of his decaying house like a hermit. So much time had passed that the circumstances that caused him to retreat had succumb to the bending of memory over time and his mystery eventually turned to whispered neighborhood legend. It was a tragedy when it happened and after losing her, his life unraveled faster than a spool of kite string in a blistering wind, alone he hung there at the end, alive but not living, too broken to heal, too old for it to matter anyway. There were no more clocks or calendars or dates. Loneliness filled in the cracks where love once lived and the only thing he tended with devotion was her rose garden behind their empty home, the last bit of life in his world. And when he died, it would die, leaving only a memory where love once grew.

—

WC: 150

Prompt: Hermit

The Death of St. Valentine

Today is a day we observe love on a global scale and only the positive aspects seem to be recognized, of course. Facebook fakeness and overpriced representations of love given never really seem to represent accurately anyone’s living reality although this seems beside the point. But is Valentine’s Day also a day to mourn love? The answer to this question is a simple yes and this year she will be officially mourning the death of love.

She is not too sure how it is possible to exist in both ends of the love spectrum but she simultaneously feels the ache of a full heart, brimming with absolute pure love, a love not matched, created and experienced, with no end. A love she knows she will always feel although she knows in time it will change forms but she is for certain, it will never get smaller. A love that grows into her, from her, and she can only embrace it’s purity and innocence with thanks, in debt with gratitude. This is the unending love she feels for her child.

But today she also remembers the scars and the traces of true love felt, experienced and eventually lost, like a dream she loves to remember and sometimes a nightmare she wishes she could forget. Young love, first love. The love of lust, of excitement, of risk, of experiment, of passion. A height with no ceiling, a cliff with no railing. Absolute freedom, an expression of unknown capability, which will eventually lead to overwhelming loss and scaring but she doesn’t know this yet. She is free to love without boundaries, love without fear, love with her whole self. This love is greedy. This love is the love you give to a soul you meet, a soul you don’t necessarily get the luxury of picking. It’s a love that finds you and will remain in the cracks and crevices of your heart forever.

But a new feeling to her today is the deep pit of sadness for her recent loss of adult love, her heart aches for what she knows now to be true, her prior suspicions confirmed. What little trust she had left in people seems gone, she sees everyone now as some sort of instrument that inflicts pain and her only defense is to learn to identify which one of those instruments are capable of a fatal blow and which ones only wound.

**

It is a hollow feeling and she likens it to the anticipation of the biggest party you have ever thrown, like the wedding you have dreamed of since you were a young girl. Countless months you have planned for this but for years you have dreamt of it, a visual expression of all you are capable of, an expression of love, the deepest and most perfect love that ever was, a love that you have captured and you just want to share it with the world. You sink yourself into planning, every detail set to WOW, every decoration perfect. The guest list is amazing. Music, food, weather, location. Your color scheme is perfect, your jewelry, your dress. Oh my god, the dress. It fits like a glove and you look amazing, skin glowing, beaming. Everything is exactly as you always dreamed it would be. Everyone you love and care about will be there. The calls and messages in the days before the wedding only confirm how wonderful the day will be. The excitement is palpable. Everyone is coming to see you, to see both of you. You are the stars and the wedding is a picture of the world you have created, of your eternity you will spend together.

But at the altar, all she can hear is the blood rushing in her ears, her heart is pounding, about to explode in her chest. She flushs red then white, a cold sweat. Is she going to faint? Wait, what is happening? Time has stopped and her stomach drops and her ability to process anything is brought to an immediate halt. And the feeling she shoved away, piled bricks upon, weighed down so it would never surface, ignored and neglected, never planned for because it simply was not possible, turns out to be possible after all….

…he didn’t show.

**

Of course, it would have been easier in hindsight if he left her at the altar but instead, he has, in theory, emotionally left her 6 years into their marriage where they now live abroad (in his home country). They have a son, a mortgage, friends, a life, a home… they have made a life together. This fatal blow comes on the heels of surviving the grief of losing her twin sister and eventually her mother and remaining sisters in the angry aftermath. Surviving his betrayal and being able to walk away with minimal, lifelong injury is the best case scenario. But of course, he hasn’t physically left her. Not yet, at least. She caught him cheating. And the selected truth he gave only turned out to be the PG version of the actual events that again, she had to uncover on her own. He says he loves her and always has. Life was just too hard a few years back and he was weak. He will never do it again. He is sorry he hurt her. They can work on it…

But all she can think about is what does she get out of this? When life gets hard he gets to have a year-long affair to ‘escape‘? Where is her escape? Childcare? Housework? Alone in her grief in an empty emotional house? Somehow the scale does not seem to weigh equal.

And the worst part is, she really loves him. She meant every vow she promised when she married him… but now, from this point forward, she shares him with another woman, and she loves him too.

So here she sits writing this story on Valentine‘s Day. Lie one discovered in December, lie two just two weeks ago. And tonight they will get a sitter, go to dinner, spend some time together. She will try to keep it together so they can try to enjoy the night and she will try not to explode into the worst version of herself because of the anger and betrayal and embarrassment she feels. She will hope that the tears come after he has fallen asleep, in the discomfort of their bed, in their home, in their marriage. She will mourn the love she has lost, weep again for the dream she has lost and the new reality that has sprung up in its place. She will imagine her life if she stays, she will imagine her life if she leaves, on perpetual loop with no end in sight. No way is the right way anymore and from this point forward it feels like just a series of losses; of her dreams, of her self, of love, forever.

Rest In Peace St. Valentine (1700 – 2/14/2018)

Forever Try

Eyes fixed in a gaze of infinity,

Peering deep in my soul to the inner me.

Seeing light release so freely, so easily,

To the outside of the world where it’s meant to be.

**

Darkness, all alone I sit wanting you.

The thought of us against the world, the thought of just we two.

Shedding layers of ourselves, the new us comes in to view.

I have lost myself somewhere, what am I to do?

**

One by one I find the bricks that I left behind.

One by one I build them up, a new wall I find.

Creating space around my heart, I find the ties that bind.

Like a lonely road in the distance, my life forever winds.

**

I want to run, reach out to you, hold you forever near.

Not sure that is possible anymore, you forsake me, dear.

Created doubt where before I only dreamt of fear.

However now, where we stand is painful, it is crystal clear.

**

Dig deep, reinvent, make myself brand new.

The honest truth, told to few, if only the others knew.

I take a breath, look to the heavens, pray for a simple clue.

Do you love me? I don’t know but I still love you.

**

Rings get broken, rings get lost, an example shown,

Of the love we advertise, a safe forever home.

The light of love, obscured by grief, I left him all alone.

But the truth, my heart I gave to you, a forever loan.

**

I will make it right, change my heart, become a butterfly,

Change from the caterpillar I am comfortable being which is exactly why,

I gaze away into the blue and watch the birds fly by.

Another chance we give to each other, another forever try.

Here, Take My Sweater

A reminder of love no longer leaves an indent on her skin.

Her most prized possession, her pride, her heart, tucked away in the cupboard in a glass made for a candle.

Hardly a home for what was to be a forever vow.

The clock ticks on and the desire for distraction drives forward.

While her heart, like walking through mud, trudges behind her life.

Are we there yet?

What seems now like slow motion, faded sun bleached memories distant, bring forth the pain of fire somewhere within.

In a place she forgot she had.

A place she hid before, in plain sight, exposed weakness mistaken for inner strength.

She searches for home base.

Her only real focus comes from being on the edge of breaking although the edge seems less like an abyss since she has seen it before.

Nearly entirely exposed after total embarrassment all that is left is the sound of a weary exhale and her inner eye roll because she knows all she can do is climb the mountain, again.

It’s oddly comfortable at the bottom of the mountain but she knows that if she stays too long the change will be permanent.

Her nickname should be Bootstraps after all this shit.

At least that thought makes her laugh.

How many times can a person reinvent themself?

The answer is always at least one more time.

And so she will.

Naked ring finger, naked self, exposed to the world.

Look and get it over with and move on already.

And when your time comes, and it does for everyone, I won’t gawk.

I will give you my sweater to cover your vulnerabilities.

Because when I stop giving myself to everyone, I am dead to the world already.

Broken Vow, Shining Sun

On her 6th cup of coffee of the morning, she has hardly eaten anything as Don Henley’s End of Innocence ironically plays in the background. She is awake, in a hazed mix of sorrow, regret and indifference. She isn’t even angry yet. She plays the imagined scenario on a loop in her mind, each time changing it a bit to imagine all scenarios possible. A torture, an obsession, she never wanted to imagine it and yet she can’t stop herself now. He thinks a day is enough time for her to adjust, accept his apology and then to start planning on how THEY are going to fix it.

The silence is peppered with outbursts built from an intense need for clarification of his side of a story that doesn’t fully add up. Quick, let’s get over it before you think too much about it, she knows this is what he is thinking. He is upset she swore at him, raised her voice, was louder on their walk through the night around their neighborhood than he would have liked. What would people think? What would they say? If only they knew. If only he knew what she wanted to do to him. She stops so many times on their walk, just shaking her head and needing clarification because it doesn’t make sense what he says. It’s too without real emotion. “It doesn’t matter what she wanted.” he said. He ended it. But it does matter. How he strung her along does matter. Her love letter does matter. It matters that she, his wife, found that letter by accident and that he didn’t tell her… and he admits he wasn’t going to.

In sickness and in health, for richer or for poor, with honestly and choking lies…

He says he didn’t lie. He says he told her about the affair…only after confronted with the note, of course. Is a lie just as bad as truth withheld? It’s 9 days until Christmas. What a present. Bullshit, wrapped in lies, tied up nicely with a bow of endless self-consciousness. He is ‘uncomfortable’ saying affair so he says ‘inappropriate behavior’ instead. Um, no. Inappropriate behavior is burping at the table, swearing in church, asking someone if they are pregnant when they are overweight. That is inappropriate. Not carrying on an intimate relationship with your employee, building up a “connection” for months during physical therapy treatments that involve back massages, while kissing her on the neck or cheek or whatever bullshit he said and did to her. That is far more than inappropriate. And it’s not just one incident either. Several he admits. Several inappropriate incidents is not the same as having an affair, he explains to her. “An affair requires commitment.” When asked if he thought that was an inappropriate thing for a married man to do he said, “Look, it’s my job to touch bodies all day.” Mother fucker, that is not what she meant. Everything is downplayed. It didn’t happen a lot, it didn’t go further than that, he chose his wife so he ended it. “Can’t WE just move on already?”, he says to her. The 6 months leading up to this “relationship” (he doesn’t like that word either) doesn’t count. The span of three months that this happened over doesn’t really count. What counts, according to him, is that he ended it.

Or did he? She wonders. After all, it’s not like he came clean to her on his own. She caught him. She found the note in his computer bag, by accident. It literally fell on her lap. She knows he couldn’t keep it at the office, maybe a coworker would find it. He couldn’t keep it in their home, maybe she would find it. His work laptop bag which she never ever used before hadn’t been used by him for a couple of months, September to be exact. All she needed was to use it for the day because they had no internet at their house and she figured the coffee shop we be a good workstation for the day. How could she have prepared for this? He kept it there hiding amongst his papers. Important enough he didn’t throw it away. And why not? She wonders. This unimportant inappropriate action seems to be not quite that after all. Why else would anyone keep a love letter like this? Another denial that doesn’t make sense to her.

Near the forest on their walk in the cold of the evening, she stopped again for more clarification regarding the details of his story. Again he had the opportunity to downplay it all and reexplain why the way she was connecting the dots was actually all wrong and how it was less emotional than she was saying it was. She asks him a question that caused him to flash an expression of shame which up until this point he had not showed her. “Would it diminish your relationship with your affair if you explained your thought process behind how this all happened and her unimportance the same way you say it to me now if she was standing right next to me? Or would you say it differently?” It was clear the answer was yes. She still meant something to him or at least what they shared did, even if he could not admit it to himself.

And what now? What was she supposed to do? Be the woman that gives her husband another chance, a chance to fix what he wronged, to choose love over a statistic, give him the chance to make their life the way they had planned? To trust him again? Or will no amounts of chances make a cheater and honest man? She feels like a fool either way. He created doubt where none was before. And she must asks herself over and over again these unanswerable questions for the rest of her days… can this ever work? Can she trust him? Will he do it again?

Staring out the window in a daze she watches the clouds float by slowly. It’s pretty. The sun breaks through and for a brief second she feels like it is a sign. Relief rushes over her. And then a cloud obscures the rays of truth. She takes another sip of coffee, waiting for the sun.