Member-only story
I Sat Still While You Moved On
Did I think you were coming back?
What was I hoping would happen? I still can’t say.
But I knew the undeniable crack of heartbreak when you left me sitting all on my own, doomed to parse through an existence that would never share breath with yours again.
It wasn’t any different than all the other times this had happened. Guys lost interest. No matter how I intrigued in the beginning phases of acquaintanceship, I always lost some veneer or gloss of allure. They always said I had a nice smile, but they didn’t care when they departed, taking away the slip of what had been my one clue of something like happiness.
I waited in the booth until the pounding of my head began to subside. It was a normal night, the same as any other, but something had changed. An axis had tilted within me, upending the balance of the world I had known. There was a clear split: a realm with you, a hollow space without you. Two halves of a circle, one speckled with colored glass and the other like a picture bled of rainbow hues.
Love — maybe it beat in my blood, maybe it didn’t. It was still too early to say then. But I knew an ache now that hadn’t existed prior. An amputation had occurred, and the phantom limb pulsed with the memory of existence.
