She Was.

Mainly I’m quiet. Silent. Getting through the days. I don’t really get through the days. They pass. There is a difference. I started work a week after being home. Work that came about through kindness, perhaps pity and kinship. Definitely kinship. I’m a service girl in my uniform of tight black jeans and wristband. I serve. It feels fitting. It feels appropriate. And when I clean up at the end of the night I’m sticky wet face flushed nauseated. It feels good to be nauseated – to feel – even if it’s just revulsion. That’s the worst part of all of this – the not feeling. The quiet. The heaviness. The silence. Friends call and I watch the phone, blankly, waiting for the room to fall back into silence. Afterwards I don’t bother checking my messages. Somewhere I feel guilty. She calls. I miss her so much. I don’t answer. I can’t speak to her. I don’t know what to say. She wants me to be better and I’m not. I don’t want to tell her that I feel quiet inside. I want to be good for her. To sound bright, to ask about her life, to sound like I am coping. I’m not. Every now and then I smile to myself – so this is what a broken heart feels like. This is what love feels like when it ends. And I am sure, sure I will never love again. I will never feel again. I’m just fading into the background, whitewashed, without light. And I’m so fucking scared.

Last night, he smiled at me, and when I smiled back my heart thumped. It didn’t flutter, it didn’t race, it didn’t even pick up the pace, but it most definitely thumped, and for now, for this broken service girl – that’s enough.