Twenty-fifth of October

The stain of love

Is upon the world.

Yellow, yellow yellow

My heart broke on the twenty-fifth of October and I don’t think that day will ever be the same again. Twenty-fifth, twenty, t-t-twenty; all bad things begin with T. Terrible. Tornadoes and terrorists and toads, taxidermy and tummy ache and Tracey Sheck from year two who ripped the head off my Barbie.

My tender heart didn’t so much break, actually. Soft things can’t break you see, they can’t snap; they merge, change shape. My heart twisted and contracted in on itself, turning blacker and blacker and blacker until it was a knot in my chest, ripping and wrenching and sniveling and swiveling. It was a closed fist ready to punch punch punch the face of heartbreak; but the face of heartbreak was a face I loved and my poor heart shriveled like a dry dead thing at the thought of this.

We want different things I said, and that’s okay I said, and I put a smiley face at the end :) and pressed send. Immediately I wanted to erase it and type YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVED ME, IT’S NOT OKAY IT’S NOT OKAY IT’S REALLY REALLY NOT OKAY just like that, in block capitals and everything. But I had pressed send and once you press send that’s it, that’s the end, and you watch and watch and watch the pixels until your eyes swim.

I wore your jumper to bed for two weeks straight. When it was time to wash it I cried in the launderette as I watched the machine destroy the last of your scent with every soapy oscillation. It went round and round and round in circles, much the same way we did, only I did not come out clean at the end of our cycle, oh no sir. I came out dark and distorted and heavy. So heavy!

But your jumper came out clean. Fresh and dry I lifted it to my face and breathed it in. I have never known clean laundry to smell so disgusting. I wrinkled my nose and I threw it to the floor because it just wasn’t good enough and it just wasn’t you.

I see you in everything.

I loved the smell of you. I loved your hands and your chest and the angle of your nose. I loved your full lips and the way you hold your jaw when you’re mad. I loved the way you pinch the corners of your mouth when you’re eating to check for crumbs. I loved the way you’d roll over in the early hours of the morning, smothered in sleep, and pull me closer.

I loved the way I thought you loved me.

But I was under an illusion. You were a bold wizard, a puffed up uppity prick, an exclusive solo wanderer never moving, so fucking stubborn; a lone wolf howling at the moon not to confess love but to tell it to go away now please you’re annoying me.

I have so much to tell you. We told each other everything. The happenings in my day stack up in my head like Jenga blocks and I itch to recount them to you. It’s as automatic as breathing, but I remember at the last second that no no no, it is not like that anymore.

I cry often, for no reason at all. A random memory of you will pop into my head, just like that – pop! I’ll be brushing my teeth and I’ll think of the way you wrote our names on a rock at the park near my house and kissed me and it smelt of Sharpie and ferns and I tasted hope on your tongue. And my chest will constrict and my tears will fall into the sink, mixing with the toothpaste, plink-plink-plink.

Only they don’t make that noise. They don’t make any sound at all, and I want to know how can something so leaden with pain be so tiny and insubstantial?

How can I tell

If I shall ever love you again

As I do now?

Poem: A Love Song by William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963