Sunrise

I awake in a state of mania as so often possesses me when my eyes open before dawn.

The clock reads 4AM and suddenly I’m struck by the memories. Oh, the memories. They’ll be the death of me. The best and the worst. Are they one and the same? Every good memory will never occur again. Nothing new will be added to the storage bank. Why are they always at this time? I’ve spent endless nights laying awake with only flashbacks to every mistake in my life.

For a faint second I hear the phone ring,

Brring. Brring.

But it does not ring.

I hear a voice in my ear,

“Please” she whispers.

But she is not here.

I feel the breath on my neck of a woman I once loved,

yet I am alone.

I see the words from a deep conversation dance through the air to the tune of the wind and the arrangement of the constellations,

but the memory escapes me.

I hear a knock on the door,

Bump bump bump.

Yet no one could possibly be here. They’re all just hypnagogic dreams-

Bump bump bump.

I double check the time and walk down the hallway to the door, stepping slowly as if the door might explode inward. I look through the peephole. This must be a dream. But then why is the pain so real? Why have my eyes lit up like a boy in a fairytale who cannot believe the face before him?

I unlock the door and turn the handle slowly, opening it at a leisurely pace to not seem frantic. A part of me wants to tear the door off its hinges so my door will never be closed again and she won’t even have to knock.

“Hi.” I say.

“Hello.” Her voice sounds like home. A home I never realized I needed until I saw it before me, beckoning me.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask.

I am curious why she would be here after all these years on my doorstep. I want to know why. But the why doesn’t truly matter, all that matters is she has arrived. She could ask for a million dollars and though I do not have it, I would find it. She could ask for the stars, and I would pluck one with my bare hands and accept my death. But she does not ask for these things.

“Yes.” She says, and then violently falls into my chest, arms wrapping around my back. It is her. The eternal her. The ethereal her. The everpresent her. Not the one that haunts my mind with dreams of what could have been, but the one who haunts my heart with memories of what was.

I put my arms around her and her scent strikes my nervous system, igniting neurons and connections from the hairs on my arms to my heart which in this very instant resumes beating after a seven year hiatus. I’ve dreamt of this moment for so long and my expectations are surpassed. I could die. Perhaps I will. We walk inside to the living room.

Books are spread open and stacked on top of one another, covering the surface of every table. Sheets of paper filled with writing sit underneath the books.

“I didn’t have time to clean.”

“Oh, please, it’s always been like this.” She says.

“Do you want tea? Coffee?”

“Oh, I couldn’t do coffee, I haven’t slept yet.”

I look into her eyes and say,

“Sounds like all the more reason.”

“No, no. Just a cup of tea. Please.”

“Okay.”

I put the kettle on and we take a seat upon my couch next to one another. Our eyes meet and dart away. I watch as she scans the room.

“You haven’t changed the place at all. Look at this plant. It’s dead. Is this…I bought you this six years ago, didn’t I?” She points at what once was a vibrant yellow sunflower, now only the black color of death and decay. It sits in a dark brown pot.

“Seven. “ I correct. “I like that plant. Even dead there’s beauty in it. Maybe it’s only beautiful because it’s dead.”

“I always loved the way you view the world. It’s different from me. You never really change.”

“That difference is why we’re here.”

“Yeah. You’re right. It’s what made us so great together though.”

I correct her, “I have changed.”

“How?”

I’m stumped. I want to tell her how, but I also want to go back to how I was when we were together.

“I don’t think my living room represents the totality of my life.” I say.

“Tell me how you’ve changed.”

“I’ve been working on communicating better.”

“Oh. Is there someone else then?”

“Was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I ended it.” And I ask, “What would you have done if there was someone here?”

“What would you have done?” She asks.

“Hmmm. I would…no, nevermind.”

“Tell me.”

“No.” A time existed I would tell her everything. I can’t so easily go back to the way things were. I shouldn’t.

She says,

“You have changed. You just told me no. I can go if you want, you don’t hav-“

“No. Stay.” I look at the ground in front of me.

I add, “Your voice sounds the same. I’ve missed it.”

She looks in my eyes and smiles and I don’t understand how it can bring this same emotion after all this time. It must be a dream. I don’t gather my thoughts before opening my mouth, they come out and as I speak I make sense of these feelings.

“You want to know how I’ve changed? I can’t sleep a whole night through, and I don’t want to. I love the night because I can be alone and I know no one else exists besides the odd other night owl out there. Everyone else passes from dusk til dawn like time travelers, but during this time I’m alive.

“I’m awake when the sun rises every day and I know if I look out my window I’ll see the most wonderful thing in the world, but it will remind me of you, when watched it together all those times, and so I give it up. My favorite thing in the world has been taken from me.

“I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore, except for you, but we haven’t spoken or seen each other in so long and it feels as if I’m living in a body going through the motions without any life running through my bones. I lost before you, and I’ll lose again, one day, but I’ve been waiting patiently for the day to come when I can step outside and find wonder in the fact I’m on this earth. Joy in the mundane. Beauty in the living, and not just the dead, but at this point I’ve lost hope this feeling will pass.”

I want her to grab my arm and hold me and calm me and right when she’s about to, the kettle whistles.

I stand, realizing as I do my heart beats in a way it hasn’t since we were last together. I pour the hot water into a cup for her and bring it over, placing it on a table beside the couch. There’s nothing I want her to say after hearing this. I only want her to know. I need her to know.

“Tell me, how have you changed?” I ask.

“I don’t know if I have. I just figured out I got cheated on yesterday.”

“What?” I try to control my face but I can’t.

“Why are you smirking?”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I know. It’s perfect, isn’t it? I break up with you, Mr. Perfect, and get cheated on.”

“I wasn’t perfect.”

“I kn-”

“But I was pretty fucking close.”

“You were. You were.”

“How’d you figure out?”

“He told me. It was once. We were far from each other for a few months because of his work, and when he told me I was hurt, but a part of me understood because it wasn’t easy for me either.”

“You shouldn’t accept someone who cheats on you, even if you’re far from them.”

“Let me finish. You always loved to cut me off.” She says.

“Can we wait five minutes before we start fighting? Please?”

“Sorry, best I can do is six minutes.”

I laugh. “Do you ever miss our fights? Like the rush, the anger, the…passion?

“No. I would get so mad I couldn’t eat.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“You miss them?”

“No, I don’t want to fight. But the emotions. I was alive during them. What were you saying?”

“Turns out he cheated on me his first night there.”

“What?”

“Yup. A girl came up to him at the bar and then boom. Just like that. They went home that night.”

“Wow, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I deserve it.”

“No you don’t.”

“You’re smiling for a reason.”

“Okay, does it make me a little happy to hear? Yes. And I’m sorry. But you don’t deserve that. I’m just happy that you’re here.”

“Well, thanks. For saying I don’t deserve it.”

“Do you think you would have married him?”

“Yeah.”

Finally, I ask.

“So why are you here?”

“Umm…” She lets out.

“Is this for revenge?”

“What?”

“Did you get a hall pass, so now you’re here to be with me one more time before you go back to him?”

“No, that’s not why.”

“I’d be honored.”

“Shut up.”

“Tell me why then.” I post my hand on my chin and look at her, unrelenting.

“I just…I needed to see if there was still something left between us. If things felt like they did before.”

“And?” I ask, but I don’t give her the chance to speak, maybe because I fear the answer. I lean in and kiss her on the lips, and from there everything comes back. Every prior moment runs through my head and coalesces instantaneously. I remember every place where our lips touched. Every time I looked at her and an obsession possessed me which made all my worries in life fade away. Every time I said I love you and every time she said it. The first. The second. The 489th. The last, all those years ago, and how I’ve longed to say it again. It is the one thing I know to be true in this universe and which no one can take away from me. These memories collide with now; enhancing, enchanting and electrifying every touch, kiss and whimper.

We move to my bedroom and I remove her clothes and her body has changed, as mine has. For a moment we take in each other like that, drinking in the transformation through our eyes. Why can’t life be this? Looking into the eyes of a lover you thought you’d never see again for eternity. Relief and euphoria encompass us; her emotions become mine and mine become hers.

This may only be a night, but it will be enough. It has to be. It must. I will be healed and the pain will be gone and the memories of all these years alone will disappear into the void from which they came and there will only be now and the future with her and my only thoughts will be her and it will be different than last time and it won’t end the same because it will never end.

No.

It won’t be enough. Nothing will ever be enough. I have everything I’ve ever wanted right here yet these emotions which have plagued me for years remain. Time is supposed to heal all wounds but I don’t think it’s true. Some wounds never heal. My mind is in my mind. 

We lay together: my arm around her, the scent of her hair intoxicating as it always was. 

I wonder, is now only so great because I know it may never happen again? As long as we’re silent we can pretend this will never end. That things are how they were before. I want it to last forever. I know it can’t. She would always be the first to get up. The first to have to go. The one with responsibilities and a life to get back to. The first to speak.

I say, “You never answered my question.”

“Which one?”

“How have you changed?”

“Maybe we don’t change. Not truly. We’ll always have the same problems, the same traumas, but we can get a little bit better at handling them. A little bit more aware of how they affect us, but we can’t get rid of them.”

“I think we can.” I tell her.

“One of those big differences between us.”

“Yeah.”

We sit there. Every misaligned conversation, differing interpretation of each other’s words and of the world running through my head, and I still can’t hate her. They aren’t what make me say,

“We can’t get back together.”

“What? Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“Yes. It has been all I want.”

“Then why?”

“Something isn’t right. I’ve wanted this for so long. But I still feel as I did. The pain hasn’t magically gone away. We won’t be the same. We aren’t the same, even now.”

“I’d love to do it all again with you. We can see how we’ve both changed. Together. And change again and again, always with each other. There’s no one else I want to grow old with.”

“Until a week ago. When you didn’t know the truth about him.”

“That’s not true though. I’m not only here because of what happened. I think about you constantly.”

“Then why did you never reach out? Never text or call?”

“I didn’t want to make it harder for you.”

“That made it so much harder. And now you want to-” I stop myself.

“We can try.”

“Why couldn’t you have chosen me when I needed you? In those first few months after we ended things I thought about you every day. All day. It felt like I was dead to you, never hearing from you like that. You walked away like it all meant nothing. I thought I was crazy. Did you not feel what I felt in those moments? Was it an act? And every new person I’ve tried to date I’m disgusted with myself because I feel myself pretending. I wish I cared about them but I’m unable to. Is that what you felt with me?” Another question I shouldn’t ask.

“No. Never. I’m sorry.” How can words which once would have meant the world not even stir an emotion from me? I don’t need to hear anything she says I only need her to hear me.

She continues, “You were everything to me. I just…I had to give myself the chance to find someone new. To heal and not look back.”

“Since you got here, I’ve had this underlying sensation. It’s not the same. I want it to be and I’m forcing this projection onto you of the way things were. But I don’t feel the same anymore. You’re not the person you were when we were together, and that’s okay. We can’t go back to that. I tried to love others the way I loved you but it’s all been imitation. Like I was playing at what I thought love was, and my only experience was with you.”

“No, it felt the same with him at first. Doing the things we did, him meeting my family. I remembered them with you so vividly. I compared how he acted, how he joked. Everything. I’m not lying when I say I thought of you all the time.”

“I wish you would’ve told me sooner. I will always love you. But I can’t go back to loving you the way I did before.”

Once again we are consumed by silence and sorrow. We grieve our relationship yet again. I’ve lost count of the tears I’ve shed with her for this exact reason. She lays her head in my chest and the tears soak me. I let out the same.

I want this to be the last time I mourn the life we could have had, but I know it won’t be. I’ll mourn the fact I’m the one choosing it now. I’ll mourn the fact it came too late. I’ll wonder if maybe in five years I’ll feel differently, and maybe that time she’ll be the one to say it can’t happen. Mayb-

“The sun’s about to rise.” She says.

“Let’s go outside to watch.” We get outside and sit on the bench we sat on so many times all those years ago.

The sunrise reminds me of when I first saw her at the door tonight, but more importantly the first time we stayed up late enough to watch it. I feel her eyes upon me as I take in the beauty, and I’m seen in the way only she can see me. The way no one else has, and no one else will. I wonder if she can read every thought in my head solely by my eyes. I look at her, and she turns back to the sunrise. It sparkles in her dark irises. Her skin glistens half in the sunlight and half in darkness.

The sun sits behind the treeline in the distance, peeking out. Above the horizon one long horizontal cloud goes from end to end in the sky, just high enough to make space for the entirety of the sun as it rises higher and higher. The light appears to cut a hole into the trees. I watch as the ground right before us becomes more visible and details of something so close yet unrecognizable becomes clear.

The first time I fell in love I saw her shimmer under the rays of the morning sun, somehow unaware of her own beauty.

That was the only time I fell in love.