It began simply enough.
Looking at her picture online, willing myself through the cramped confines of its borders so I could see more detail. Those eyes, her lips. Wistful expression on her face. I wanted to ask what she was thinking, just then.
I would say, "In some universe, we are together."
As if some stars would align and there would be a great synchronous "click", as reality aligned two halves of our lives in parallel from each other. Dark machinery spun into motion, unknown to us both.
I held my glass high, so it obscured the light. Swirling inside, the elixir of the damned. Weeping rivulets on the glasses edge, sinking into amber, vortices curling around clear ice.
The room was dark, save for a single display. Coarse blue light washed over my face and hands, becoming the stain that I couldn't remove.
"What does it matter anyway", I said, speaking to nothing.
A time and place made so by my own hand.
I should finish this drink, let it carry me to another shore, where pain was a dark smear on the horizon. I wanted to swim in coral seas, run on silver sands.
Tipping back the glass, letting the slow burn descend to my core.
Recalling the words passing between us, how I became ugly in her eyes and her heart.
If I only had known the power of such things, back then.
Then the inexorable tear, thread-bare cloth unravelling in cold winter winds. Pushing away from the sight of myself. Blaming everyone and everything, except me.
She took what she had brought, and even then -- even then she turned to me and gave me one last sweet parting. The look in her eyes was the truth I couldn't bear.
This is where my rage and hate should be pouring out, flooding bile and dark deeds. To say somehow, that she was the cruelest of them all.
But it wouldn't come.
Shaking with emotion, fists at my side. Watching until she left my sight. Then the night came, clouds gathering and winds on my cheek. Deep down, I knew.
I had failed.
In that failure I had found a new friend, one that came with soothing colors and tastes, until my mind didn't burn with the fire of forgetting.
Eventually, I straightened up. Casting the bottle aside.
One step, then another. If I couldn't be what she'd have, then I must be something more.
I must be a man.