Unfinished Symphonies

Author’s note.

I have 3 unfinished symphonies written about this man. 

Then he blocked me.

Because I didn’t say goodnight one night.

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I allowed myself to think ‘maybe’.

Maybe this time.

Maybe he might be my person.

He felt like my person. Under my fingers and in his words.

Under his body I felt wrapped in warm blankets and loved.

Maybe baby.

Maybe fanning the flames of a fire in my heart, a beautiful warming, a glow.

Visions of hearth and home at last.

But no.

Something went wrong and the fire escaped.

Burned everything to the ground over a bit of carelessness.

And now I am choking on cold, dead ash.

Its coating my tongue and I cannot speak.

It’s stuck in my throat and I cannot swallow any of this.

I cannot eat and I can barely breathe.

My skin is grey with it. The sun blocked out with smoke and clouds.

Mama nature is empathetic to my moods today and has covered us in cool breezes and cloudy skies.

I whisper “I’m okay, it’s okay” to myself but I’m not listening.

No part of me understands sudden unexplained absence. For I, myself, am not capable of such cruelty, such selfishness. Maybe that’s the lesson. Maybe this is just another brick in the wall I am supposed to be building around my heart to keep it safe from maybe and hope and fairy tale versions of realities that come dripping on honey tongues without substance or any plans to have a happy ending.

Just endings.

I couldn’t tell you what is worse, the slow tear of falling apart, being pulled apart by a fate I don’t understand. Or the quick hack of the blade that severs completely but leaves a phantom limb to itch and throb under this harvest moon.

He was supposed to come for me in the fall. Catch me as I was falling. But he disappeared without warrant or warning.

I truly do not understand any of this. Calling me wife and then leaving suddenly.

I do not understand much it seems. Just tripping and falling in the same shallow puddle just with different names and dates attached.

I hurt. But I won’t become bitter.

I am flipping through the filing cabinet marked “past” for something familiar. I know I have survived this before but I have forgotten how.

So many of them did this. Almost all.

Just to come back later saying they couldn’t give me what I wanted.

Funny, they never asked what I wanted.

Just you.

I forgave them. Just more bricks to build myself with and lessons upon lessons. To be gleaned when my eyes dry and I can see again without the words swimming and the tears falling on blank pages and half written requiems about how I felt. How I feel, none of this has passed for me yet. He’s gone and I am still in it. I never left.

This one might never resurface. But I’ve thought that about all of them and in time we finish spiraling out on our separate orbits to cross paths again.

Not knowing is the hard part.

The first 48 is the hard part.

When the wound is fresh and throbbing.

But I know the soft pink of new scar tissue.

How with time I can run my fingers over the Braille of what was and find beauty in it.

Mending my cracks with gold until I’m completely gilded.