I want to tell him that I’ve changed. That art changed me and healed me and that I can express myself better and that my independence and freedom and creativity are the most important things to me - but part of me thinks he already knows this.
I am always searching for what I have lost. And I think he knows this, too.
For all of the times I stormed out of his apartment, I somehow always found myself back there, at least once or twice over the years.
It’s a bit magnetic, isn’t it? How 3, 4, 6, 8 years can go by. And it doesn’t take long for him to be holding my hand from across the table again.
He plays with my mom’s wedding ring that I wear religiously on my left hand.
“You know what you need? A diamond here.” He outlines the shape of a rock on my bare ring finger.
I roll my eyes. “Too many diamonds on one hand.”
A grin appears. He shakes his head.
“Words I’ve never heard anyone say.”
-
Eclipses control fated events. Eclipses scream out our destinies. What we’ve been ignoring, what we’ve been suppressing. What we’ve been following, or what we haven’t been following. Doors will shut, visas will get denied (lol), but new pathways will open.
What is supposed to happen, happens. And what isn’t supposed to happen - well, that doesn’t happen either.
-
I am back in the area where I was raised in Toronto for a few days. This area helps me to breathe, it helps me to see things more clear. I get my September favourite - a chai latte to go, and walk through the pathway underneath the canopy of trees that are changing colours. I left my sneakers in Rome, and I think I am the only one on this trail who is walking in satin cheetah print slides. I arrive at the fountain, I arrive at the plaque. The spot she picked out. I kiss my fingertips and place them on top of the grey marble.
The sun beats down on the both of us.
I think I just might…still feel…something. I tell her.
I quickly walk away.
-
“Remember Terroni? My friends always made fun of me after that night.”
It was a Friday night in the beginning of 2018. I had bailed on a friend of mine to go for dinner with him and his friends. It was my first time meeting everyone. I don’t remember much of that night - except for the fact that we were both drunk, and how he kept grabbing my hand underneath the table, and how he wouldn’t let go.
“I was smitten.” He smiles. “I told them that I was just…smitten.”
-
The beginning of 2018 brought upon a lot of changes. I was meeting my dad’s new girlfriend for the first time.
He tells me to call him after to let him know how it goes. I tell him everything went fine.
“Well. You’re a lot more mature than I was in that situation.”
-
Since being back in the city, the number 5 follows me everywhere. I look up the symbolism.
5’s represent change, but a good change. Changing behaviours and patterns to get you to where are destined to be.
This past summer, we had fought. He unfollowed me on Instagram. I didn’t take well to this, but I decided that this change needed to be represented as a story on my body. I call the nearest tattoo parlour.
The man on the phone asks me what I want done.
“Just a four letter word. Muse.”
He tells me that the artist is available. And when he says the name of the artist, my heart drops.
They have the same fucking name. I text my best friend. Can you believe it?
-
Travelling back to 2017 and 2018 is painful. Travelling back to 2022 is painful, too. Because I don’t really recognize the girl who was, but I recognize the girl who is.
I don’t want to be seen as the lost girl whose mom had died and was taking out her anger and disappointment on everyone who loved her. And I’m scared that is who he sees, that is who he is reminded of.
In my old apartment, a photograph of her hung in my hallway. It’s that photo where she wears a white button up, and her arm is resting on the fireplace mantle beside a pile of old books. The way she gazes at the camera is mesmerizing, as if she knows something we’re all just trying to figure out.
I always wondered if I showed him too much of who I was early on. I was reactive, honest, and a little volatile.
We had got into an argument the night before. He said one thing, I responded back with a hit below the belt. It went back and forth, back and forth. I don’t remember the recovery, other than the fact that we used sex as a band aid, as a tool of forgiveness.
Sex with him always feels like an extension of our communication. Like giving someone a hug after you haven’t seen them after a long time. Or a kiss on a cheek, telling them to text you when you get home. It was easy. It was always easy. And it still is.
But when I woke up the next morning, I knew something was different. As he was getting ready to leave, he paused and looked at that photo of her hanging in the hallway, and looked sad when he went to kiss me goodbye. And in that moment, I knew. I knew the end of us was coming.
I never told anyone that story. Not even my best friend. But the way he looked at her, it was haunting. As if he was apologizing to her for letting her down. And he knew. And maybe she knew, too. He knew he couldn’t save me, he couldn’t be what I needed. What I needed was to be alone in it. Alone in the ruins of what was left. I couldn’t put my pain in his hands.
He had already held too much.
-
Years, years, and years have gone by since that late fall of 2017 and early winter of 2018.
“Once I figured out you that were involved with two guys who worked at the same bar, I stopped reading the letters.”
“Well it actually ended up being five, by the end of it.”
He starts to laugh and shakes his head. “Of course it was. Of course it was five.”
He’s moved from the chair across, to the spot at the booth next to me. But he’s still holding my hand.
I look down at our intertwined fingers. “Sometimes I feel like…you’ve always had a hard time letting me go.”
“But you haven’t let me go either.”
-