Bye

Sadness wouldn’t cover the loss. I tried my hardest to make that clear. She told me to forget it. I told her I loved her. Crying and angry, she slammed the door behind: ardent, fixed, focussed on her idea, an idealist, which is what I loved and loathed about her. I was relieved. And I turned my phone off to avoid any temptation to chase her with messages. Somewhere, though, she had done the same, so no difference.

I sat at home worrying, alone, sad though relieved, and I did so till this day. I’d go walking the streets wishing I’d bump into her. Yet she’d never stay close enough for that. I went in and out of other relationships. None of them were happy, all of them sensing my mind was elsewhere and one of them thinking I needed to ‘grow up’. Grow up, and past this shade I’d find happiness again, but once I found the sun here, and so I wait. So I never left the house. I took Vitamin D.

‘I lost you,’ she said at night as I drifted, in some garden and with a Christ-like tone. I’d run away from the thought eventually. The next day it had never happened, until that evening.

I hear it now every day and wish I’d gone back. ‘Bye.’ Age won’t rot this love.