There she was sprawled on the sofa, draped really, reading a book, laughing.
"What's so funny?" I asked.
I remember sitting on the floor across the room from her, with a calculator, but I don't know what I was doing with it, my body and actions judged to be irrelevant by my memories. I just remember her, that day, vividly. She was carefree, barefoot, dressed in summer clothes though it wasn't yet quite warm enough for them, but we were indoors and had the furnace running in order to make our own personal summer in the apartment we had shared for two years. I remember her slender fingers wrapped around the worn book she held, and how she flexed the spine of the book each time she turned a page, as if she was making sure each unruly page knew it was being read and the book itself was being disciplined. She took the same ethic with the rest of her life--every action was determined and deliberate.
"It's just a funny bit," she said, distracted and with mild irritation. Her mouth became expressionless and she read silently, her face blank, blocking me out.
And I had a feeling. Like I was falling from a height, high enough to reach terminal velocity. I knew. I didn't want to acknowledge it, but I knew that our moment together was gone, and maybe had been dissolving for awhile. We were at our end.
We were together for several more months, but it was apparent she had made her decision and just had yet to act on it. And when she left it was without tears, on both our parts.
Love is a tragedy because no matter how hard you try, you can never truly be with anyone; you can't know their honest thoughts, you can't feel exactly what they feel, and in this way, you can't ever really know anyone else, and no one can ever really know you. All the kisses that feel like they're filled with sunshine, the sex, no matter how intimate, all the touches of fingertips in the darkness, can never chip away at that truth.
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