When she leaves, his eyes stay open for four days. He doesn’t look at anything though, because it’s more what he’ll look at if he closes his eyes that worries him. The building is new and his ceiling is white and flawless so he fakes cracks in his mind to add up while his eyes dry out.
She leaves behind a mug and stray hairs. He vacuums up the hair and keeps the mug in the cabinet over the sink. It’s blue-green and she bought it at one of those tiny pottery places that thrive in small New England vacation towns. He wasn’t with her when she bought it, but he can remember how her fingers curled around it when it was cold outside. He tries not to think in terms of her coming back for it someday.
She leaves him with the lightest kiss to his bottom lip, a sigh and, “I don’t know. I think maybe- Maybe someday, you know? But right now I-” He tightens his fingers around the hem of her shirt when she starts to walk away. She slowly pulls them away and leaves him with sad eyes and the feeling of her fingertips against his. There were so many things he could have said to her then, but he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to tell her that she honestly is his entire life.
She leaves him a voicemail from the train and he can hear its rhythmic chug-chugging behind her words like a beating heart. She tells him about her plans and how she’s so sorry and about what’s outside her window. She talks until she’s cut off and the last thing he hears from her is a fragment of a sentence about counting cows. He presses one to repeat the message and tries to guess what she might’ve said after.
She leaves in a hurry, blurring skin and curls and love. He asks her on a Sunday and by Monday she’s gone and the ring is still sitting where he left it on the coffee table and she’s calling him from her car giving him reasons he can’t, won’t hear. Everything speeds up and then she’s really not there anymore and everything slows down again until he feels like he isn’t moving at all. The ring stays where it is for weeks, because he’s hoping.
She leaves him confused, because she’s been talking about forever lately with her eyes wide open and bright and her hands reaching out for him like it’s something she wants now. She’s been touching him at work, letting her fingers slip under the cuffs of his shirt so her fingernails graze the soft skin inside his elbow when she thinks no one’s watching them. She’s been telling him that she loves him in this slow, heavy voice late at night when they’re supposed to be sleeping and he can’t understand how he’s been misinterpreting any of these things.
She leaves instead of him this time. Disappears to somewhere close but far, just like he did. Vanishes in an attempt to try again, start over, not be so weighed down by feeling and the person who knows her best, scared, just like he was.
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© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali
© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali