If I Did

– “If I loved you,” she says, “if I did, would it matter?”
Her expression pained, her eyes growing red, the strain multiplying and spreading; first around the tiny iris, like red felt tip tracing an outline, and then turning the white a salmon pink. Her lips contort as she speaks, as she holds back emotion, as she holds back truth. It’s the bulging, it’s the emotion attempting to escape; bulging at the closure of her lips. It is like the shivering of the iron door as you try to keep out the storm.
She looks away. That same jagged movement, the kind that is only present at the moment of tearing. As she turns, her hair curls and sweeps across her face, one smooth motion, and he can no longer see the salmon pink. He watches her intently, expecting her to turn back, to look back, to turn her eyes to him, to allow the fact of his presence to remain in her awareness. She does not. He wonders how she does this, how she could do this. He can never erase her presence, not for a moment, and he would never want to, even if he could.
She shivers, she takes a deep breath and she shivers. The strands of her hair seem to throb with the motion. They dangle, a veil hanging over her eyes. They dangle but they do not touch her skin, and below their dangling, he notices a small swelling, a moving moist drop of swelling. It emerges from beneath the veil and trickles down her cheek, the dim evening light reflecting off of the swell, some of it becoming lost in the swell and making it seem a little more translucent.
He remains, feeling as translucent as the swell, feeling almost invisible in the moment. He could hear her breathe, the deep absorbing of breath. He could hear air vibrating with her emotion as her sigh becomes syncopated. He sits there, almost as if waiting to be noticed, almost trying to forget that he has, in that moment, been forgotten. He lets out a quick sigh, a half breath released, a puff of air. It deflates him a little. His expectant shoulders fall, his gaze no longer holds and the attention of his neck grows slack. His head rolls forward, his eyes lost on the tiles below him.
“No,” he finally responds, in such a low voice, even if he had not been forgotten, even if she had not forced him to disappear from her awareness-then, in that moment-she would not have heard him.
She has disappeared too, not from his awareness, not from his space, but from the moment. He looks at her and she is distant, though she remains the physical presence only feet from where he sits. She is not there. It is quite possible that even if he should have the strength to speak in a normal tone, she would not hear him she would not be able to hear him. He knows this. He knows her. He knows her well. They haven’t shared too many moments along the intertwined path they’ve found, but enough. As he sits there, more swells have escaped from under the veil of her hair. He breathes in deeply, his head rises with the motion, there’s a slight stress in the back of his neck; then with the exhalation, a release. He doesn’t even try to form words.
He’s come to the realization that words sometimes are simply noise, no matter how much truth and emotion they carry, to those who’ve disappeared, to those who have made others disappear. His lips contort and he breathes in deeply, holding his breath just a second before letting it slowly escape. As it escapes, it becomes the little stream that alleviates his heart of the building pressure of emotion, so that it will not explode into swells travelling down his cheek. He meters out the air. It becomes his center of focus. He knows, it’s weak, but he can’t help it. He feels. He feels the world inside of him; wrestling inside of him. It’s the explosion. A little bit of shattering.
He continues to sit, as the evening shadows lose strength and evaporate with the light. She hasn’t said anything more and she hasn’t moved. Neither has he. Two figures in the dark. He feels the tug in his heart and he knows it’s time to get up, it’s time to leave. He wishes he could address her, he wishes he could pull her back from where she’s gone off to. Even as he stands, closing his eyes and taking one more deep breath near her, he could feel the clump of words at the back of his throat. Opening his eyes, he sees she hasn’t noticed. In that moment, she no longer cares. There are no words he could offer to entice her. He doesn’t want to turn his gaze from her, but he’s aware that if he watched her forever, he’d simply watch her fade away from him.
It hurts, loss, this loss. There was so much he looked forward to. In the words between them, there was so much that could have been, there was so much that they waited to become. Nothing can become for two, if only one continues to wait. He slowly steps away. His heart shuts down, it’s easier this way. Feeling can be murder. He walks off in the dark night and he looks up at the stars, they’re still there, they still shine. There’s a smile forming underneath the pain, a weak smile that encourages his movement. The sweet breeze of night keeps his cheeks dry, they’re frozen and for some reason it’s harder to explode when things are frozen.