Those Streets

A study in the mundanity of heart break

It’s Not What You Didn’t Say, It’s What You Didn’t Do

 

Those streets, so treacherous in the rain.   So treacherous for someone nursing their broken heart.  I walked them under the false pretense that I still was someone.  Really I’d become nothing.  A shadow or shape made from ash.  I did things, actions, I completed tasks and saw no point to any of it.   All was caught in waiting for something that never came, you refused to set me free.   And even now when I love another - a healthy beautiful feeling more secure and less unequal I still remember what you didn’t do.  I hate that we are paying for what you didn’t  do.  You made love a joke, you made commitment a game. 

 

My favourite streets were obviously those that remained from long ago, those that did not succumb to bombs or earthquakes.  I thought and felt deeply but never believed that doing good was my responsibility.  That is not to say I did bad, altruism was for others, like marriage or children or happiness.  Can one help others if one is unhappy?  Can one really drag the body and mind from the dull despair which becomes habit, life, the only future?  Can one turn from the self when unhappy?  We only care about ourselves when unhappy because it is a pain and we pity ourselves when the people around us have long grown tired of our introspection.

 

I walked to the Piazzetta, I walked behind it on heavy, sullen Sundays and I don’t remember the endless days of sun at all, only the cloudy ones.  Clouds muffling any  sound.  Those times it was cold it was so cold.  You wore a hat.    I had hardly any warm clothes, doesn’t the sun always shine there?  Those Sundays were a compulsion.  I was so alone. 

 

I walked the street that doubled back on itself where some immigrants lived and listened to eastern sounding music.   I saw them and felt very little, perhaps mild surprise.  Something exotic amidst the provincial.  I could smell the rich lunches, I could imagine the loud intertwining talk.  I waited for bars to open, I smoked in an attempt to undo the knot in my stomach, the tight rotting something that was there.   I tried calling you so often, you never replied or did eventually when it got too incessant.  There was the film theatre on that street.  The bars I liked. 

 

I walked past Bellami, not Bellami anymore, I approved of the change, of the death.  It was right that it should end - like us.

 

I think you kept nothing of us, only those things that were what you liked but meant little.  I think you have forgotten my features.  It is time to learn of the insignificance of it, time enough to realise but not yet.

 

Author's Note

This was a rough draft of something that was an experiment

Reviews

[Nita]

This was good. A nice twist on the usual break-up stories. Very good imagery, well done.