Words Don’t Work

“I turn and I slowly walk away and I don’t look back. It has always been a fault of mine, but it is the way I am. I never look back. Never.”

― James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

But I looked back at you, sweetheart.

I looked back at you through the rearview mirror as I drove away that day. You were already walking away, but yes, I looked back. I miss you. You’re my first thought as I wake up in the morning, and my last thought before I fall asleep is your arms around me. I’m living my life in a daydream. Some strange haze. I keep looking back. My God, I have never looked back on anyone or anything. I have left everything in my life without a second glance, and yet, I find myself looking for your face every time I go out, though I know you are far away now. Sometimes, words don’t work. Sometimes, you beg and plead and cry and question God and the universe and everything around you, and, it still doesn’t work. Sometimes, your whole world gets ripped apart. Sometimes you lose. You lose the person you love, you lose money (not that it ever mattered to me), you lose a place you thought was home, and sometimes you lose yourself to the overwhelming grief that plagues your every breath. I grieve you. I grieve losing you. But I also grieve losing myself too. I grieve feeling…secure. Secure in myself, secure in a relationship, and secure in the world that is mine now. I am angry. I think of all the hope I held in my heart. I think now of how it is utterly destroyed. To where do I go now? To whom do I run to? My lover, my sweetheart, my best friend…is lost to me. 

I am walking. I am walking, but I am looking back. I just hope that I get to a place where I can look forward again. I imagine the ocean and I breathe in rhythm with the waves. The pain washes over me like water, but I breathe. I reach for your hand as I feel the sand beneath my feet, but you are gone. I open my eyes to look for you on a foggy, starless night, and I am alone. “Please, come back to me,” I whisper. I pray to God  for relief or an answer or for something, anything. My heart breaks as I stand and listen to nothing but the silence and the waves. I walk. I walk, and I find a way to breathe. I will heal, just not today.