Small maroon lights glow behind the bar, bleeding through the atmosphere like dying stars. Filling in the cracks of darkness, it spreads a sense of desire. Of danger. Of lust. The trace light catches the side of the woman’s face across from me, contouring her cheekbone as she smiles. It’s not a smile of laughter, but of intention. Of an idea she watches in her mind as her eyes remain on me.
As if worried her smile might give herself up, expose her secret all too soon, her teeth gently pull down at the corner of her lower lip. The hand not around her glass caresses an invisible line between shirt collar and a necklace.
A million words are said, but none with our mouths. Her smile returns as she extends her hand to me. Palm up, waiting for my own. To accept her hand. To accept our joined path. An intimate handshake to thoughts we already shared.
Mirroring her smile, my hand hovers above hers. Playing. Teasing. She waits, desire twisting up from dimpled tributaries and filling her eyes. I set my palm to hers, and everything goes black.
Severed Love is Never Severed
Despite the death of our relationship, roots of our love remained. Roots twisting through memories. Through experiences. Through scents and tastes and smells. The roots had consumed entire senses.
With the death of our marriage and an end to our cultivated growth, I chopped away at everything visible. Everything the world could see. Everything I could see. Pictures deleted, furniture removed, gifts destroyed. Not always out of heartlessness. But out of the need to continue. The need to emotionally survive. A photo of us on a rooftop bar in Thailand. Hands clasped. Smiles more for each other than the camera. Fireworks popping off not just behind us but inside of us. I loved that photo, but every glance of her paper eyes cut me. As did the smells of her shampoo absorbed in the pillowcase. As did finding her hair in the shower or bobby pins behind the couch. All cuts to the heart. All items that had to go.
Sometimes memories were not immediately apparent. Cooking with a saucepan on the stove, I looked over and imagined her, standing on one foot, the other pressed to her anchoring leg like a flamingo. It forced me to smile. It forced me to cry. The roots of failed love can infiltrate anything.
The saucepan had to go.
Visual love can be severed, but the roots remain, rotting away in every corner of thought.
Why Won’t The Roots Die?
She watches as I slide my hand onto hers, the smile remaining. The maroon-hued contour of her cheek prominent.
At least I think they are. My mind stops recording when I slide my hand into hers. When my fingers glance over a slender bangle around her wrist. It strikes me like static electricity, but there is no charge. Not from her at least.
My ex-wife would wear one. It could be the same one. Maybe it’s different. I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. The thought has already fully taken hold of what I see. Of what I feel. The way her bangle felt against my skin as we held hands. The way it absorbed warmth from her wrist and passed it to me. It let me feel her without actually touching her.
And now I can feel her again. An entire lifetime away. In a place I don’t want her to be. In an experience I didn’t invite her to attend.
There she is.
The roots of failed love can infiltrate anything. Why won’t it die?
I had to go.
How Do You Fall Out Of Love?
I thought I’d done everything I could.
I’d burned and destroyed and buried thoughts of her. I’d cut down what we built and sodded over where our relationship once stood. I’d said everything I needed to say. I told the world I was ready. I thought I was.
But the roots of love are hard to kill. And to my knowledge, a root canal of memory doesn’t exist.
As I walk away from the bar, hands pushed in pockets, coat collar flipped up, the winter wind cuts through everything but my thoughts. Those I can’t shake. Those won’t let me free.
A year has passed since our marriage ended. Even longer since I discovered why her workdays lingered into work nights.
I told myself I had moved on. The roots said otherwise.
A single out-of-place spice can ruin a recipe. A single out-of-place memory can ruin a date. It can ruin whatever might have come from it.
And now, somehow, despite having not seen her for over a year, what we had pushed itself deeper into new experiences. Perhaps not all roots were rotting. Some were trying to grow. Trying to hold on.
And I don’t know what can be done.
Other than to fully fall out of love.