It’s 8.15 am and I am sitting on
the balcony smoking a cigarette looking at the giant golden cross on the roof
of a nearby church.
I woke up again today in tears,
that’s three days in a row as the pain and hurt finally start to release from
my body after months of isolation.
I think about the last ten years.
Ten years is a long time and a
short time, like the blink of an eye.
So many places and faces, drunken
evenings, hungover mornings, joy and laughter and despair.
I think about her living alone with
our dog and everything she must have been going through and how I really could
and should have done more.
A swallow dips and dives across the
blue skies and for a moment I’m tempted to leap just to feel the same freedom
but instead I smoke another cigarette and keep pressing repeat on the sad
music.
My head spins and buzzes, full of
regret and questions.
How did we get here, how did things
get so fucked up?
Will she ever be able to forgive?
Will I ever be the same again?
I step back from the edge.
For now.
I listen to the songs we loved
together and reminisce on the best times - the magical times.
I try to stay occupied, just to
keep from losing it entirely but the days feel like months, like years, the time
since we walked away longer than the decade we spent together.
Charlotte, I only hope you can find
what you are searching for, I hope that one day we can speak again and the
anger and bitterness subside.
I hope I can survive long enough to
see that day.
The tears keep falling all morning
and there seems to be no end to this torture, my shoulders slumped, eyes red
and puffy, somewhere in between living and not living.
Clouds cover the blue sky and I
think "of course, I can’t even have sunshine".
It’s cold for May, tomorrow seems
impossibly far away.
And my heart in pieces, holding
onto thoughts of yesterday.