Member-only story
My Muse Went Down to Carolina
Oh, she had no other way out.
I didn’t say goodbye. That’s probably what hurts the most.
She packed her bags quietly in the dead of night, and I never heard a sound. Normally, I would have heard every creak and clatter — but not that night. I was a light sleeper every night except that one midnight when she left.
She left a note, but it took me weeks to read it. I didn’t want to stain the paper with my touch. Everything about it felt too final, too real, too much to take in all at once. I’d lost people — plenty in my short time on this earth, anyway — but never once had someone left of their own volition. In that way, she was the first spark of something I’d never known before. Who knows, I might never know it again.
But I knew the burn of losing as soon as she divorced herself from my life.
And with her departure the words died. They withered inside me as if they were on some unseen branch that had started to rot beginning at the roots inside my soul. Heartbreak amputated the invisible string tying her to me, to the core of what I was, to the very essence of what I had believed myself to be.
Who knew one person could be such a nuisance? But I gladly would have welcomed her back — if only she would have taken me in turn. Oh, if only, if only.
