Here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter how many times you rearrange your room; it’s still the room you last saw him in. If you stand in the corner by your bookshelf, you are still standing on the memory of him on your bed, wanting to hold you, and you sliding away.
Where your desk now sits, formidable, your chair once did. You can type pages upon pages about other men but you’re still sitting where you once sat, tears drying on your cheeks, fury beating it’s wings against your ribs, while he crouches by your knees, and rests his hot palms on your thighs and says, Look at me. Look at me. You hear the pleading in his voice but can’t tear your eyes from that spot on the far wall. You can’t stop screaming in your mind. And he says, Look at me, pulling your chin gently towards him. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. It’s in his eyes. The fear and the tenderness. The slight shake in his voice.
It’s the welling in your chest. It’s knowing you have already forgiven him, that you would forgive anything.
But, your ribs break and you shift your legs away from his touch disdainfully and you whisper the words you already regret as they rake across your lips.
Just go.
It’s the way our bodies react. The way our hearts and minds can’t agree. The words you say despite every fiber in your being reaching out invisibly, clutching at the air, desperately trying to reel them back in.
Come back, you want to cry out. I love you. I’m sorry, too.
The bones in your body aching. Your fingers, brittle, digging into the arms of your chair. Your teeth clenched, eyes burning with the tears your mind won’t release.
These memories.
You can vacuum up his dust and you can take the pictures off the wall. You can make your room a wonderland of what once was but he’s still there. In the shadows cast by a lamp, in the note you find scrawled in an agenda, in the pictures you find hidden in an old text-book, as if you were saving them, from flames, from time, even from yourself.
That’s the thing. This time it’s your room, but it could be any room, as long as the lighting is dim, the right song plays on shuffle, or your mind quiets. Still enough to hear the memories scratching beneath the floorboards.
It’s your room, but it could be any room.
That’s the thing.
Pearl Jam – Just Breathe
(Song choice via Yellaphant)
