Lovingly, Never Yours | 3

3.

Among all the ways to lose a loved one, death is, ironically, the least heart-wrenching.

I’m writing to you lying prostrate, fully aware that I could reach out—but I don’t want to. I don’t have the will to.

When men attempt to profess their love, they call their beloved pretty, beautiful. Their love language is adoration, flattery, and awe of their muses’ beauty.

Not long ago, an Iranian beau told me:

جای شما خالی

When they have food and miss someone, they say, "jaye shma khali", which essentially means: Your absence was felt.

It has stayed with me ever since.

For the past 20 minutes, I have been enduring this damned, rammed station. Now, I understand the appalling frustration of the man I was once thrown off by—the one who, mid-phone call, started yelling about how he wanted to nuk.e the entire population just to drive in peace.

It is difficult to extract introspection from a man who is relentlessly uber-positive, the farthest thing from a critic. Such a trait, under ‘normal’ circumstances, is astoundingly impressive. Or perhaps, one could assume, you are empty. Empty, vain, soulless… like a carcass.

Anne Carson says:

“Perhaps the hardest thing

about losing a lover is

to watch the year repeat its days.

It is as if I could dip my hand down into time

and scoop up blue and green lozenges

of April heat a year ago in another country.”

It’s true. Life is an endless winter, and my heart lies in a summer lost a decade ago. I pitied the man who continued to weave his muse's name into his writings five years after their parting. I never want to become him.

But

my hunger for love is cannibalistic; it will end up consuming me. I want to be freed from the shackles of this hunger—this unending need, endlessly seeking fulfillment from an external, unwavering source. This hunger is an autoimmune disease. Chronic and lethal.

……

Sometimes I only wonder what you had for lunch. Or, if you ate at all. That’s the only concern I have.

I wish you had just died. Then, I could easily give you up to oblivion.

Lovingly,

Never yours.