severed

I don't remember whether we said "I love you" the last time. Going through motions of familiarity, pretending that the divide was not there. Reminiscing not through memory but through touch, the memory not of the mind, but of skin and taste, gingerly tracing the familiar thread broken up by time. Holding on and saying goodbye at the same time. But I couldn't deny the divide---I felt it all the way, through to the last hand-hold, the last kiss, the last look back (this time, you actually looked back for the first time), the wistful smile and the final wave. We walked away from each other and we'll choose not to walk back. I was numb, aware that there was a world around me, but it couldn't touch me then. I came up and ate the last bit of the breakfast we shared and was surprised at my ability to eat without tasting. It was something to do. I didn't cry, you know. I was relieved, more than anything, that at last I could be done with it and eventually stop hurting.

But once in a while, I remember the last night I held you. I don't think you held me in quite the same way. I shook with knowledgeable sobs, knowing that this could be the last, was quite certain it would be the last time we would be together with any semblance of mutual, reciprocal, vibration. But I know it wasn't enough to move you, not the way it moved me. "The last time" happened before we even knew it. The end was a memory reel, fading out and fading into an extension of the end that I hope lives up to its promise of a complex, rich, and satisfying beginning.