I am the fork in the road, disrupting the clear path I had
set out for myself.
I am the one who stands between me and a lucid state of
happiness.
Until I can switch off from what was and what could be, I
sit at the same desk each morning and coat my lips in raspberry scented butter.
It does the job. I drink my coffee, think to myself how it’s not as nice as
Wayland’s coffee but it’ll have to do seeing as £2.70 every day is a lot to
spend on coffee.
That’s when his face flashes into my mind again. We’re
approaching the two year mark that will round off when we last spoke, so why am
I thinking of him now?
I realise what an awful person I am to have loved another
since but have left behind so easily compared to the whirlwind of daydreams and
sleep dreams the first has featured in recently.
An awful, awful person.
Perhaps, or perhaps I’m just lost, tripping over my
shoelaces in a rush to tie them and so I ended up tying them on the wrong feet.
All this time I just needed a change of shoes.
Does that metaphor work? I’m not sure it does.
I think about his hair and wonder if it’s still long and
untidy like it used to be; a golden whisp, always soft and always looking right
even though it was a mess. I wonder if he still makes the same kind of jokes,
do the same phrases still spill from his lips… I wonder if there’s another girl
adopting those mannerisms as her own in an intense attempt to become part of
him.
Shake it off. You’re
fine.
The last inch of coffee has gone cold, it doesn’t matter, I
wasn’t enjoying it that much anyway. I’ll end up going to Wayland’s later I’m
sure.
I pull my arm into my coat and almost feel my hand reaching
for his like I did that night. In unison with a past version of myself, I pull
my hand back. I don’t get to hold that hand anymore. It’s over. The end.
I leave the mug to be washed up later. I’m an adult now; I
clean up when I feel like it.
I haven’t felt like it for a while, I can tell my mother was
judging me the last time she was here. But I pay my rent and I cook my food and
I decide.
I think I could do with tidying up though; if only you could
tidy your mind like you can tidy a little room. If only I could pick up his
hair and his hands and his lips and put them in a box to be locked away in that
little cupboard above my wardrobe that I can’t reach properly.
If only I could dust away all the traces of that dream I had
a few weeks back where everything was lovely and okay and I was happy and he
was here.
Key in the door, light off, locked, gone.
When I get outside and put my playlist on, I forget for one
moment.
One foot after the other, I find comfort in the noise my
heels make on the tarmac; click, clop, click, clop. Only adults wear shoes like
that, it’s these shoes that make me a woman, not him, not what we used to do
when we were in love and the doors were shut and the lights were off. No. It’s
the shoes. My brand-new shoes; no laces.
The tracks from Reputation play into my ear and I feel like
a powerful woman; one who owns her heart and is in complete control of who is
let through the gates. If only it were true though; if only I could control it.
I see him walk in front of me, dashing in front of the
windscreen of his car to go and pay for the petrol. I see him turn his head to
look back at me before he enters the garage. I see the way his eyes used to
look when he looked at me. He hasn’t looked at me for two years and several
months but I can see it.
There’s no one there of course, except one lady and her dog
who stops to say hello to me and then forgets me once I have continued walking.
That’s what life is meant to be like; you get back up, you
carry on walking and you forget: the past isn’t reality anymore.
But when you can still feel that buzzing in your chest that
you haven’t felt for years despite holding hands with another man, you just
cling on for dear life and you can’t let go.
I can’t let go of the box of things I kept under my bed; the
necklace he bought me that got tarnished on my nightstand, I couldn’t bear to
put it away. His guitar pick that I accidentally dropped into my guitar bag
instead of his, the birthday cards, the concert tickets. Everything.
I can’t forgive myself for throwing it away, despite tears
streaming down my face, when I packed up my things to move away.
I find myself wondering if he would ever forgive me for it.
I walk through the wind despite its brief threat of rain. I
carry myself over foot bridges and pedestrian crossings; through streets of
people in love or otherwise. My hands meet the door and I feel a small weight
lift, I open it, I’m greeted with warm air and the soft smell of freshly brewed
coffee.
