Brownian Emotion

I came back to our house today for the first time in weeks. Just hours after you left for the last time – the beginning of our permanent dissolution. As I stepped across the threshold into this carcass of our dead love I found myself overwhelmed with grief. For the first time in weeks, instead of boiling rage, I just miss you. I guess some part of my too slow brain was still expecting you to be on the other side of that white PVC door, greeting me with one of those warm hugs, arms so lanky they’d envelop me whole.

The place is immaculate, scrubbed cleaner than I’ve ever seen, surfaces gleam. All your stuff is gone, which it turns out wasn’t much of our combined belongings. Apparently you didn’t want a single keep sake or memento of our decade together. You left every photograph, every holiday souvenir, even the records your parents gave us. Discarded memories for me to dwell on alone. The emptiness of the drawers on your side of the dresser feels profound. You didn’t even leave a fingerprint as you fled the scene of your crimes.

But I can still sense you as I lay down on your side of the bed, knowing you were here just hours before but that you will never lay here beside me again. This bed where we’d talk and laugh, and you’d trace the contours of my skin with your calloused palms, inhaling the smell of my hair as we’d watch the tree tops sway. It is unfathomable that it’s Her scent that you want lingering on your pillows now.

I feel your absence like a phantom limb. The sensation of your body next to mine so familiar and vivid it’s almost corporeal. You are a shadow that never materialises, on the other side of the door. A laugh I cant quite hear that still reverberates through these halls.

Am I doomed to chase your ghost while you exorcise my existence from your story, rewriting history to justify the means to your end.