You broke me to the point I thought I would never get off the living room floor that morning.
But I did get up- after writhing and wailing on the cold plank floor as a wounded animal might, my heart torn from my chest by the unforeseen force of you and the vacuum you left at the very core of me with your words of goodbye.
Weeks later you faltered, tried to take back your leaving and ended up leaving me hopeless on Valentine’s Day all over again. I watched you leave, a stranglehold on the single red rose you’d brought me. I stood anchored to the pavement until your tail lights disappeared in the night. It was hard not to collapse in the street and wail as if I was back on our living room floor only a month earlier.
Ground zero.
Obsessively, I kept going back there. Back to the site of the explosion to see if I could see inside its ragged edges, determine what went wrong. I’d inspect and scrutinize the wound but all I could find was how I still adored and cherished everything about you.
Was it too easy? Was it too much? Was I simply too much easy for you?
I decided it had to be me, because me I could control, maybe I’d be able to change myself, fix whatever had pushed you off my course. But if it was you who had simply grown bored of me or found me out to be less than you’d expected, well then, I was sunk.
I’d already used all my tricks to make you fall in love with me. I had nothing new to give. Foolishly, I had given it all up front.
Perhaps I am your claim to fame? The only woman you so completely broke that she would never be the same. Do you warn the ones who’ve come after me? Do you disclose how you married me in Presidio Park in the presence of every friend I had? The promises you made beneath the shade of a fig tree? How two years later you left me gutted and disfigured from the inside out?
I think my friends knew you would break me. I remember how dazzled they were by you and how sure I was they had secretly decided you were out of my league. They were not surprised to see you go.
You’ll forgive me if I’m honest, but I’ve made a point not to talk about you unless pressed. My current partner knows all she needs to know. She knows I am broken and she loves me despite it. She assumes I have always been broken and attributes less credit to you than you deserve.
Back to ground zero.
I’ve visited ground zero less and less as the years pass. I even stopped wondering about you, where you are, how you are. I don’t see you in crowds anymore. I’ve almost forgiven you.
The last time I went there, time and distance had sharpened my memory until something pivotal from that day, the day it all fell apart, came hurtling back to me.
You were confessing feelings of attraction for a woman with whom you worked. This was the second time, the second woman in two years. You had grown distant and indifferent towards me.
The cold January morning sun was streaming through the kitchen window. Ribbons of sunlight trailed over my shoulder and pooled on the mahogany sideboard where my hand rested.
I listened to your excuses, feeble explanations and confusion about how you felt about me and her. You receded from me as if being drawn backward through a tunnel toward its vanishing point.
With surreal vision, I watched as my hand, open palm, raised up and then came crashing down on the wooden top as I calmly said, “I’m done.”
Up until this recovered memory I never saw our end any other way. You, and you alone had broken us. But perhaps this was not the whole truth, maybe we broke each other.
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