Schrodinger's Lover

It is not much like a poem, but more like prose poetry.

In the suffocating darkness of my room, I lie awake, my eyes fixed on the ceiling where shadows dance, mocking specters of happier times. Sleep eludes me, as it has for countless nights, since the light of my eyes left, a void so vast that it threatens to swallow me whole.  The silence is almost deafening, punctuated only more by the erratic beating of my heart, each pulse being a painful reminder of its continued existence despite the agony coursing through my veins. 

I’m Schrodinger’s -lover both healing and hurting, forgetting and remembering, loving and loathing. Until observed, until some external force collapses the waves of my grief, I continue to remain here, in this liminality, neither fully present nor completely lost in the past.

The geography of my world has shifted, known landmarks now seem obscured. Streets we once walked together, have become labyrinths of memories, each turn threatening to reveal the Minotaur of this failed love. I’m both Theseus and the beast, hunter and hunted of this maze of my own making. The symphony of life plays on around me, but I’m deaf to its melodies, being attuned only to her voice, the absence of which haunts my very existence. I have become a walking paradox - present yet absent, alive yet inanimate, a state of emotional uncertainty.

In quiet moments, I find myself reaching for her. My hands seek hers in an empty bed, my lips form words meant for her ears alone, only to be met with silence. The absence of her presence lingers in every room, in the scent of her perfume that still lingers on my clothes, in the faded imprints of her magenta lips on my teacup that I still can’t bring myself to remove from the shelf. Each artifact I uncover - a dried flower, a torn bill, a forgotten note - is both treasure and torture. They are Rosetta stones of a dead language, the idiom of “us”, now indecipherable in the harsh light of “me” and “her”.

Friends offer comfort, their words well intentioned but hollow, unable to reach me through this fortress that I have built around myself. “Time heals all wounds” they say, but they’re unbeknownst that time itself is my enemy, each passing second a reminder of how long I have been without her. I nod and smile, a mask of convalescence hiding the turmoil within, playing the role of a person slowly moving on, while inside I am screaming, drowning, dying.

Yet, somehow, I am grateful for this agony. For in the end, is this not the quintessence of the human condition? To love, to lose, to suffer and yet to continue, carrying the weight of our experiences like Atlases bearing the sky. In my pain, I’m more alive than ever, more attuned to the exquisite tragedy of existence.  The magnitude of my suffering is a reflection of the depth of my affection, and in that I find a bittersweet solace.