Flaw Salad

I was hoping to find a wreckage, maybe. Couldn’t you have been a mirage, so many months ago, when I thought you were everything, everything, everything? Couldn’t it have been a stupor, some drunken mistake?

No, it was clear then as it is now. Your kind eyes and beautiful face and infectious laugh, the warmth radiating from you, how easy it always felt with you—none of it was a dream.

I hoped to find this tower, this triumphant behemoth of adoration, erected on faulty foundation. But no, you are as sturdy and strong as I remember.

I corrected my eyes as we talked, forcing them from their trance, from their too-long gaze. My hands, too, required discipline. They kept following yours, and I wondered if you noticed. I wondered if my body betrayed me, if you saw the overwhelming flood of long-dormant love flowing from my limbs, my eyes, my upturned lips.

Of course, if you did, you were far too good to embarrass me, and my gratitude is just another brick in the tower.

As we walked away, I didn’t look back like they do in the movies. You’d let me hug you a few seconds too long, and I’d felt the finality of the gesture. I’d felt your unspoken, “Keep it up, slugger,” and your silent, “Godspeed.” I didn’t look back because I knew you didn’t either. Because how many times can I survive watching you leave me?

Later, in the park, I saw a dead squirrel. He had curled beside a bench and frozen there, and his lifeless body looked like the sweetest of sleeps. I sat beside him a while, and I thought about us. I thought how long I’d imagined we were only asleep.