March 2, 2012

• She touched her lower lip to the rounded ceramic rim and gently sucked in the wisps of steam rising from the hot tea. She watched the smokey strands suddenly find direction from their meandering dance to rush through her lips and into her lungs, returning to their relaxed rise as soon as she stopped inhaling. She wondered if her lungs benefited from the moisture. Then she wondered if the essence savagely boiled out of the tea leaves evaporated along with the steam.

  He cleared his throat. She looked up, daring him to make demands of her.

  His eyes flickered away instinctively from that look before he quickly regained his resolve and composure.

  “There’s something we should talk about,” he started before she responded with, “So talk about it.”

  He looked at her and saw the same radiance that first made her irresistible to him. She wasn’t the type of gorgeous that turned heads or made men think dirty thoughts. She had the type of fearless beauty that inspired you to forget your fears and take her hand for the jump. It didn’t take him long to make the jump with her.

  “We’re not working out. In another time and place, we might have worked out, but…well, here we are.”

  He paused to give her a chance to speak, but her eyes and lips remained unmoving, waiting for him to say something of substance.

  “You need too much from me, and I can’t give you what you want. I’ve been incredibly busy and you haven’t made life for me any easier.”

  I gave you everything I ever called my own.

  “I know you’ve given me so much and bared your soul to me, but that doesn’t make anything better. Maybe that makes me a coward, but I was never the type that imagined saving the damsel in distress. You need a prince and that’s just not me.”
  

  When she came to know him, she wanted to save him. He was too isolated, too unexposed to love. She tried to show him what it was like to be loved unconditionally, to be worth sacrificing for, to be stronger than selfishness. She failed, but he succeeded in showing her what it was like to love and lose in utter helplessness. She learned that she had gone through life following naive dreams. For the first time, compassion lost its universality in her heart.

  “You–” she started, but as soon as she started he stopped her. “No, you know it’s not just me. You messed with my feelings. You kept pushing and pushing and you eventually pushed the wrong button.”

  It was both their faults. That they both recognized. They hurt each other. A led to B which led to C, D, E and here they are at F. It doesn’t matter that once, they had touched and felt the world in each others fingerprints, that once, the golden leaves rained in the autumn sunshine just for them because they were in love, that once, music made sense and gave them a place to spend time with each other when they were apart. It doesn’t matter, because he didn’t let her touch him anymore, and there was no more music that didn’t stab at his heart, no more leaves left in the sky to prove love was real.
  

  They both knew where the turning point had been, and it was tragic. Fate timed the provocation perfectly. She planted the seeds of doubt in his head, and as soon as she did, she fell victim. He responded by blaming her, making her believe that it was her fault for putting herself in the way of another man’s insult. He refused to acknowledge her pain. He shrugged at her when she reached for him. He even laughed at her.

  She blinked. “I agree. We’re not working out.”

  He swallowed, afraid of her power to drench his denial in acid with her words if she continued, but she didn’t. She had looked up and memorized jokes so that she could cheer him up when she knew he would be stressed. She had stayed up late, writing love letters and saving snippets of inspiration for his worries. She had rubbed salve on the embarrassing chafes on his body. He had grabbed her hand and refused to let go. He had held her through entire nights. He had opened her unrealized body with his patience and tenderness. He had kissed her forehead and promised to show her the world.

  Finally, she looked away. “Although,” she continued, “if you don’t want to end up alone and unloved, you need to learn to be less selfish.”

  She thinks she knows more about love than he does. She doesn’t know anything. She’s the one who will end up alone if she can’t be content without drama.

  “Goodbye.” He got up to leave and then threw at her, “You stopped being important to me the first time you told me what happened that night. I’m sorry it took me so long to let you go.”

  The door slammed without the finality expected of moments like these.

  She looked down, saw that the tea had stopped steaming, and then the world began to quiver.

  • 12:34 am
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