Piece by Piece
I am getting ready to go out, and I bought the prettiest dress on Brand Ave. It’s bugle beads, white silk, like a ballroom dancing competition gown. You’d put a number on my back, I’d bet.
You never understood the way I dressed. You just walked some paces behind me, embarrassed by my flamboyance, but loving me at the same time. I look really nice, but I don’t know why I am bothering. I am not going to see you. It doesn’t matter. This anticipatory time, the hour before going out, getting my hair and fixing my face just right, because I was going to see you, or you were going to see me, is for nothing. I will put all this makeup on, slick my hair back, get this zipper all the way up on my own, just to hold this vague disappointment in my heart for several hours, holding my breath until I can go home and take off this mask and this dress and get into bed and wonder what happened to us.
It is good some days, bad other days, and it doesn’t really change, no matter how much time passes between now and then, when we were us. You were much more than someone that I loved once, but then again, the way you are and were the kind of spirit cursed to span all time, which I told you again and again. And so continually you haunt me, even though you are far from an apparition. You are solid and opaque like your black tights and undeniably there.
Occasional nights I miss you so badly I will wake up screaming. Alarming, but at least it is at the moment still occasional. It would be funny, if it weren’t my fault. But I left you for dead, even though you were just limping. I got indignant and angry, and now I am too embarrassed to invite myself back into your life. Not that you would want me. You have new friends, new people, no desire to look back. Why should you? But you leave your life, like a door ajar, so I can see inside, but I can’t come in.
The party I am missing carries on without me, and I feel what I have missed like an arrow in my heart. I can cut off the arrowhead and the feathers on the back, but a broken piece remains lodged there still, subtly impaling me forever. I am not aware if I hurt you, but I know I hurt myself by leaving.
You know, there are people that I leave that I never want to leave, but I just do. I am not sure why I do this. They could be lovers, friends, anyone. Once they are close, too close, they are cast out of my kingdom, without reason or logic. When you can identify my faults, define my frailty, expound on my weakness, you become a mirror I cannot resist shattering, and then all your shards are on the ground and will cut me if I try to pick them up. There are a few, unbreakable mirrors, left hanging on the wall, but you are not one of them. Still, I wish to see my reflection once again in your eyes.
I come home, remove this face I have painted on, for no one in particular, and I see myself, refracted, like uneven, jagged triangles of broken glass. I put myself to bed, piece by piece.