She Was.

I came to you fragile, mostly broken. You swallowed me whole and regurgitated me better.

I came to you a stranger, trembling hands, other. Flowers in my hair.

I remember you.

The rise of your grey flecked mountains, the lush curve of your warm valleys, breath stealing time again. Your hardest heart and your softest centre. Your majesty, your horror, your grief. Your grief. Like mine. For sons and brothers and fathers, and daughters and mothers who leave, who die, who miss, who grow old without you. Now, I, like them, long for you. Grieve for you. The void of you. My sparkling dazzling beautiful decaying city. Loss. Mine. Mine. My loss and my grief. In you. Swallowed whole and regurgitated better.

In your dirty crowded streets, under your polluted blue skies, in the arms of your weather worn monuments, naked in the stained used beds of your pay by the hour rooms, you pried me open. Open. And my tears fell. Onto your pavements, into your seas, dribbled, moaned, sobbed. You gave me.

My greatest rejection. My biggest love. My safehaven. My sanctuary. My heart. My whole. My breaking.

I miss you like a lover. I miss your warm marble arms.

My heart. My heart. You gave me.

Your hope. Your humanity. Your despair.

You gave me.

Down your flesh selling alleyways, there, where your sisters live, they sell your daughters. You gave me. And you took.

I miss your light. I miss your surprise. I miss your throbbing beat within me. I miss you like a lover.

You gave me place. You made me one of your own. And showed me that I always was. I exhaled and you held me to your side. You gave me your lavenders and your greys. You gave me my history. Your pain. Mine. Your oppression, my colonized heart and I miss you like a lover. You took.

You swallowed me whole and regurgitated me better.

And I miss you like a lover. The void of you. My face stinging.

I have nothing useful to say. Perhaps I never did.

I have turned inwards. I am grumpy, ugly, frustrated and irrational. And I am wallowing in it.

I am almost certain that I am never going to fall in love again or be loved in return. And I’m fine with it. It’s my choice, because fuck him, despite his best efforts I can still fuck my own life up thank you very much.

I miss his mother more than I miss him.

I am angry at Australia for being so far away from the rest of the world.

I am furious at the way my entire life has been turned upside down, and I am tired of trying to put away the mess.

I don’t even care that I am alone anymore. I have a cat in two continents. That should suffice.

I realised today that as always, when surrender is required – I fight. All the wrong battles. At the wrong time, to my own detriment. Like I fought for us, like I refused to accept the end, like I avoid confronting the hurt implicit in this new story of you and I.

(That lazy afternoon, in the shower, after I’d found her email, when I thought it was still just you and I, when you were kissing me, eyes closed, you’d already left me. I’m not asking you. I just want you to know that I know. You’d been leaving me bit by bit for months. Leaving me in bits and pieces. Taking me apart slowly so I couldn’t put myself back together. You were long gone. And I, my pieces, had already begun to miss you.)

Early this morning, lying in bed, trapped between the desire I feel for the imposing (brand new) man in my life and the body aching hurt gifted to me by my past, I realised that the conflict, the stagnating, the inability to make a decision, the tethering to him, my heart, will not end, if I don’t stop fighting it. I resist. It is what I do. I resist when I need to submit. I can’t run away from his ending and my own fracturing. I can’t [fantasy] fuck myself out from under it. I can’t ignore it or rise phoenix like above it. I need to sit down with it. With my bits and pieces. Stare them down across the sob worn kitchen table. I need to let the countryside wash over me, the islands, the hand holding, the kissing of fingertips, the melding of bodies late at night in the Athenian heat. Every fucking moment that sweeps me up, fills my heart, and leaves me breathless, is unwanted and struggled with, when it needn’t be. Those moments, are mine. To do with as I please. And his infidelity, his cowardice, his betrayal, they are his. To live with, to do with as he pleases. They are his failures. His shames. Not mine. I have my pieces. My bits. And if I sit with them long enough, nurse them, hold them, close my eyes shut tight and hope, maybe, just maybe, I can find some semblance of together again.

Because the truth is? That imposing man? As much as I don’t want to. I want him. I don’t want to fuck him. I let him hold me. And now? Now, I want to know how to hold him right back. For me.

And then there are nights when I’m drenched in want. Soaked through. Standing too close, his cheek grazing mine when we speak. Unecessarily. Standing on tiptoe, leaning in, his smell in my hair. Hours later, my long hair on my pillow, I’m taunted. My hands holding his jacket, sneaking under and around his waist. Volition? He doesn’t stand back, as he should, as she would want him to. He touches me. Me. My hips, my arms, my hair, and I inch closer, closer. Crawling. And I’m overcome by all of this, the heavy limbed slowness, the uncertainty, and I’m in a hurry  – ‘hurry, quick, touch me, now, trace your cheek against my bare shoulder, take my mouth, cover me, I want to go down in you over and over and over again‘.

Instead, I don’t say any of this. I don’t allow myself anything except touch, silent, furtive, in the dark. And the whole time I’m weighing up the distance between us, the centimetres, eyes locked on his, does he flinch, does he move away, is he wanting this too? Is he feeling this too? And this uncertainty, this disbelief, this stumbling hesitance – this, this has nothing to do with him. It’s not him I doubt. It’s me.

And I’m tired of it. I want him. Longing. I want. It’s my constant. And I’m tired of it.

There are some songs (mostly those melodramatic rise and fall lost love small death Greek songs) that I simply cannot listen to. Not without panic thumping in my chest, sweat beading on my brow and bile flooding my mouth. I simply can’t. There are two years of photos that I will not share with anyone. I can’t look at them. At that life. I simply can’t.

There are moments, usually just before I fall asleep, where I remember a conversation between the two of us, months and months before I finally found out the truth about us, and it is only now, in retrospect that I see all the signs. It’s only now that I can read between the lies.

There are days, entire days, when all I want is to see his face. To hear his voice. To lie next to him. To believe in him. To love him. To just be able to love him. I’m ashamed mostly. Ashamed that given the chance, I would like one moment more, one moment more to love him, to bury my face into his chest, to smell him, to breathe him in and hold him inside me, knowing all the while that he is the worst possible kind of liar, that his love was small and selfish, that finally, when given the choice, he will betray me over and over and over again.

I have my own choices to make. Early morning late night beating heart choices. Usually with dark hair and clear blue eyes. Standing before me. Offers made. Unexpectedly, persistently and surprisingly – repeatedly. The ones I consider tend to be tall with strong arms. I dance for a while. Unreservedly. I smile, I laugh and throw my head back. Wrists exposed. Arms linger around waists, lips meet briefly. I offer my cheek, my hand, my thighs, sometimes I even meet their eyes. But when it comes to closing time, when it’s going home time, when the question is asked, I falter, stumble, stutter, hide. I stay silent when I should speak. When part of me is screaming yes. I’m scared.

I don’t like this new fear that has settled around me. I know the reasons. There was so much betrayal. Such big lies. It’s not them I don’t trust. It’s me. Because, when it comes right down to it? I missed it. I didn’t see it coming. I believed that he loved me. I would have sworn to it, staked my life on it – and in many ways I did. I felt loved. I believed I was loved. And the truth is, I wasn’t. I’m not. How do I keep myself safe now? When I don’t trust myself to see it coming? When, still, still, I can’t believe, really believe the months long ending? When I’m still waiting for a makes sense explanation, when the sting is still so overwhelming? When I failed to see.

I let him hold me.

But I can’t. I simply can’t.

I don’t want love.

I don’t want you to hold my hand.

I don’t want to feel close to you.

I don’t want to listen to your heartbreak, and I don’t want to tell of mine.

I have no interest in your secrets, your many disappointments, your frustrations or hopes for the future.

I don’t want to lie beside you in the dark and listen to you breathe.

I don’t want you to hold me, and I won’t curl around you.

I want no part of your life.

I don’t want to fall in love, care or hope.

What I want from you is far less complicated, more prosaic, not profound.

(I’m sorry, I don’t mean to disappoint you, I know you confused me for something else, and you know, you would have been right, before. I know you think I’m a good girl, and I was but being smart and good and true never got anyone me anywhere and we both know that you’re no angel, you’re no good man, that’s why I’m so glad I found you, your size makes me believe in serendipity, I’m sure it’s my reward, I was accomodating for far too long and now, well now I’m happy to try and accomodate you. Wink. Oh yes, yes, I know, I’m rambling, I do that when I get nervous. You’re nervous too? But in a good way, right?)

I know you want me.

I want to fuck you too.

I want your hands on me. I want you to push your way inside me, rough.

I want to be pinned under the weight of you, eyes shut in the dark.

I want to trace my fingers over your brand new wrinkles, run my tongue over your scars, take you in my mouth, swallow you.

I want to lie passive in my bed. Let you fuck me at your discretion, come on your command.

I want to gift you my desire, objectify us both. It isn’t love I want from you, it’s your skin warming mine.