April 26, 2024

Paris, France. Age 25

Louis and I sat around drinking schnapps from Gawain teacups, talking over the radio, lighting cigarettes from a taper candle by the window. We wasted the whole night like that. By the time it was morning, I nearly forgot we had to say goodbye.

It was all so pointless looking back. There were no conversations of substance, no grand professions of love or lust. We spent the entire evening moving between the couch and the rug, sitting like dancers, our legs unfolded, necks rolling with laughter while we idled through gossip of the last few years and ‘what’s new’. Nothing more. I ate cake with bare fingers and took off my makeup before nine o’clock.

It’s not a romantic love anymore. Years ago, maybe, when we were teenagers and it was fun to be passionate for a week; to know someone so intimately so briefly – I felt I’d electrocuted myself on his soul. The way I adored him then was instant, scarring, a jolted realization. I watched the world form in seven days. But when I speak to him now I only feel sweet familiarity – something fraternal and tender, a nostalgia toward the former versions of ourselves. The love has turned softer. The edges have worn down.

Morning was lit with this absurd pink wash of a sunrise – the entire sky painted like the inside of a seashell. We collected our bottles, emptied the ashtrays, lingered by the window while some sad, drafty song played from his Victrola and the clock ticked down. And then it was time to go, so we said goodbye. He kissed me once. He told me he thought I was a beautiful person. It was all so pointless, in the end. Horribly, wonderfully pointless.

I know what’s passed is the past, and nothing buried returns from the ground. The human condition is one of idiosyncrasy; I can’t expect to find the feeling of Louis in somebody else. And still – I’m afraid I might go the rest of my life trying to reengineer the details just to see how close I can get. Not necessarily to him, to that relationship, but to whatever warmth I felt sitting next to him on a rug with my legs stretched out. I’ll check every charity shop I visit for Gawain teacups and taper candles, just to see if they were what made the schnapps and cigarettes taste so sweet.

There’s a quote I heard – don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. Something cliché like that. And I can read those words, note the process, study the idea until my eyes go dry, but when I look up from the page to an empty room in a different city and see what’s been left, what’s so suddenly lost, I still wind up suffering the same tears. I haven’t figured that part out yet – how to carry love without burdening the pain.

That’s sort of the wretched part of experiencing a good thing; once it’s over, you can’t reminisce without some longing. The joy of what’s left stays permanently knotted in the regret of ever having let it go.