Breakup

There is a fine line between “I miss you because you are gone” and “I miss you because you aren’t coming back.”  Between “Your stuff is cluttering my living room” and “Your stuff is the last thing I have of you” and the realization of how empty everything will be without that fucking clutter.

That’s the point where you can’t go back.  When you miss the clutter and the bickering and the lying, sighing, back to back in bed unhappy, you know it’s done.  It only takes a moment to yearn for what you wouldn’t notice being gone if you knew it was going to come back, and that moment is when it all happens.

Loneliness is instant gratification when you break up and you still love someone.  You don’t have to wait and miss them on their birthday or your anniversary or the day of the week when you first had breakfast together.  Why not do it now instead, eat it fresh, raw?

When massive stars run out of fuel, first they bloat, as if trying to make up for something.  Their tinier, hotter companions steal from them, their very matter, their selves, twisting in a gravitational knot, until BOOM the whole thing ends with a comic book explosion and a neutron star spinning itself dizzy.  Important things destroy the fabric of the universe and build it again, but in the end, the stars will wink out and stillness will fall on us all.

Whenever you have slept with someone for years, and are left alone in bed, there is a hollow, and some night, no matter how hard you try, you will roll into it.  This is one of the saddest feelings in the world.  Waking up there with empty arms.  It hurts down to your marrow.

So you sleep on the couch with the lights on and no matter what you do you spend hour on hour wading through the swamp of your misery, and once in a while you scoop a cent from the water, a wish that you threw in a long time ago.  There is so much to cash in, but first, so much to lose.