Toms hand draped across my face so carefully, as if I were as fragile as cracked glass. Perhaps I was, and just needed one last sharp pain to brush past to finally break me down into thousands of minuscule pieces.
“How could I love somebody so cruel?” So painful, yet so fulfilling, as though he knew every part of my heart and soul, forging his way through my thoughts, actions, and whole being, thumping through my bones, making sure I knew he was there.
“My love,” his low voice echoes a melody of soundless words that travel through the empty hall of my mind, the plain dark hallway I chose to reside in over the constant barrage of letters pieced together, arguing against one another.
I look up into his eyes, trying to find a glimmer of goodness or purity—just something I could mold into hope, that maybe, just maybe, I could trust all his promises—that they weren’t empty. That he would fight for me or fight to be worthy of me. I know I sound like a stupid child wanting love and affection, but that is exactly what I am. Deep, deep inside me is a hole, a part of me that bears the neglected child I’ve carried with me forevermore—the part of me that wants more than anything to be loved, even if it’s a lie. But please, let it be true. Even if he has a rotting heart or a jaded mind, let his soul join mine. Let me be his heart, and please, let us be the love we never had, something pure and gentle, as lovely as the warm late-summer breeze.
I look deep into his eyes; this feels like the first time I’ve truly looked at him since he walked through the door.
“Why now, after everything? Why do you choose now to try and be better? Is it to keep me from leaving?” Is it a rhythm of words I rightfully shouldn’t trust? I’m too tired for this. It’s as if ropes have spiraled from the ground and wrapped around my joints, keeping me slow and lethargic, my feet glued to the ground, my eyes now trapped in his. I stare into the deep eyes I’ve inspected many, many times, but I feel I struggle to see them truthfully. People say how fools in love look through rose-colored glasses. I’m not the one to prove them wrong; in fact, I’m a twisted example paraded around for the cause.
I hear his voice following the fleeting silence left to antagonize:
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Please Harry, I’ll do anything, be anyone. Just don’t leave yet.”
Yet. Don’t leave yet. I feel like I need to underline the word a hundred times, write it as much as I can, fighting to find the relevance of the word in my world of hope. Yet.
“How can you have the world with nothing and nobody to know it?”
I speak up, finally breaking through the indifference. He talks back with frustration and annoyance:
“Why should I have to choose? I can have both you and your prefigured notions of greed and classism. Of course I can have the world, and you to join me in it,”
“Why do you need the world? And I never said I wanted to be a part of it.”
He could never understand. I didn’t want everything—I wanted to experience everything. I wanted to branch into the world, dance on a table drunk with no care, travel to a random country, make love on the beach, try a hundred different jobs just to know the experience. I never wanted the world; I wanted to experience life and love.
He didn’t understand any knowledge of love. It was a hollow shell that he could never truly figure out. The lack of love he experienced left him to treat love as an unwelcome guest. He expected it to crash down over him, drowning him in the ocean of ambition, lost to all he would become or could achieve.
I knew it differently, as if love were floating on water and it was keeping you up. I feel my hands tremble. Tom’s never going to know he loves me. I will never truly know if he loves me. My brain conforms to the knowing that it’s over. I suppose I was clinging to a fantasy, a desire that had never materialized.
“We can’t keep doing this. I won’t. I can’t be a pawn to your ambition, to a world you’ve created that I don’t want. I want to escape to the one I will be free in. I want to explore the lands I’ve yet to walk on. I want to make love on a random beach, get drunk on wine and champagne during the day, and curl up at night. I have no need for a greater ambition. I am doomed to blindness the longer I spend in your idealistic gaze of what you long for. To condemn myself to your life would be death itself.
“Leave then” Tom sneered in voice i’d never heard directed at me before, it was filled with such destain and cruelty.
“I’ll be waiting for you in another life,” a haunting smile catching my face as I stare up at him, I love him and hate him. He is poison I’m addicted too, taking my last hit. As I walk through the door. I can hear a bang against the table, tears streaming down my face, maybe in another life we can have what we dreamed, or maybe we’ll destroy each other or maybe in another universe we already have.