Postscript

Postscript (14th Jan, 2009, 9.29pm)

I would that I could shout and scream loud enough to reach across the miles between. I would that you could hear my voice as you sleep; I would that it could invade your dreams, disturb whatever peace you have made with yourself. What amends for what you did to me?

What if I harbour too many secrets to fit in just one letter? I do not possess the ink to form the words, if words alone could contain the meaning I need to get across. Too great the loss: too great the cost. It might take two years to write, and then you’d have to read… I think my need too great; the stamps are few and far between. I could be frank and have it franked: cheapskate I am; I vent my spleen.

Why does my heart continue to throb with the echoes of pain? Why do I tense each and every muscle in my body every single time I hear your name? Why can you still get to me, across the miles and months and years? Why do I let you visit when you elicit only tears?

Pleasure equals pain. Pain equals feeling. Feeling is essential. Where is that essential pleasure that keeps my blood beating? Sex disguised as love, and love lies bleeding.

I stumble on our uneven footing. I celebrate my own disadvantage. Around you, I become the person you made and shaped; a form of myself hated by my best friend, a witness to our last exchange, the subject heated. Why did you insist upon dragging her into it? One last stab at control… did you think you’d cut a hole right through my soul? Did you think your pull was stronger than the one we’ve made, consolatory friends: our grief bends to accommodate a trust that needs not lust to solidify. My faith in her is not misplaced: she will not abuse my blind belief in the goodness of all things.

The deepest cut is that nothing now remains. You severed the residue that binds, like chewing gum, used and grey; my love for you is chewed, spit out, done. I would that I could stick it to your shoes, glue you to one last empty dancefloor, where I once sought you, in the midst of my abandonment. You called it work; I called it loneliness. I thought I owned… not so. I did not keep up with the rent.

I would that I could scream loud enough to split you clean in half. Here comes the laugh: I salute the past, for finally a lesson has been learnt.

p.s. Try. Ignite me. I will no longer burn.