Black Compassion

I could say I need you — but then you would realize I want you

"Always," I said, my thumb tracing lips whose taste I still remembered, "always yours."

Her eyelashes fluttered, her lips trembled and I couldn't remember what I had been expecting, or what I had even wanted in that moment. All I could see in her eyes was the faint glimmer of an idea I wasn't sure I had ever really believed in.

And her eyes widened, her lip quivered and I think maybe I hated her then for her silence. Because I was admitting something I never really wanted her to know and she said nothing.

Nothing.

I continued to stand there, paralyzed, my thumb still resting lightly on her lips, trapped in a fog of feelings never fully forgotten long after I had spoken those words. My mind was spinning, racing, rapidly trying to figure out when exactly it had lost all grip on rationality.

Because I was not this man. I didn't long or ache or need. I was not this man — this man who made grand gestures with sparse words. I was not this man who expected things from other people.

I was not this man who wanted things from people, from her.

I was suddenly angry at my weakness, at my lapse in control and abruptly took a step back and away from her. I needed space. I needed air that was not so full of her. I closed my eyes to steady myself and reign in the emotions that always seemed to run out of control when she was near.

I opened them again half hoping that she would be gone, that she would have gone back to the husband, to the life she had left waiting at the church.

And just leave me alone.

But she was still there, her hands suspended in the air, her fingers curled as if she were still grasping my hand. And then she let out a little sigh, a little whoosh of air into the space between us.

And that was all it took for things to turn and sharpen in my mind.

That was all it took for me to stop being angry at myself and to be furious at her. It shouldn't have been surprising, how easy it was to fall back into cold contempt. I shouldn't have been shocked by the sudden intensity of anger I felt.

And I wasn't. I just think that sometimes I forget how easy it was to hate her.

This was the way it had always been with us. Always the simple things, the small things destroying us. A hesitation, a look, a smile, that was all it ever took to force us apart.

This time it was simply the way she stood there, her head bowed and her shoulders slightly slumped in defeat. This time is was the way she appeared to be disappointed.

As if it were all my fault that we were here again, silent and distant.

So I hadn't told her I loved her. So what? I had shown her the ring. I had told her it was hers. Always. Wasn't that enough? Couldn't it be enough? So I hadn't said I love you.

Well, damn her, neither had she.

And this is the way it would always be with us, always one breath away from being together, always one breath away from forever.

And I couldn't take it anymore, the longing, the yearning, the angst. Seeing her there in front of me, in her white dress, another man's bride, it all seemed so unnecessary.

So useless.

"You should go back." I finally said, because I didn't want her there anymore. I had wasted so much time already, wasted so much time remembering and regretting her. I had wasted too much time I wanting her.

She was the callous one, not me. She was the cold hearted bitch without a heart. She was the one who had moved on. She was the one who had left me behind and hadn't had the decency to forget me. She was the one who had invited me to her wedding, the one who had so purposefully invited me to share in her happiness.

Happiness. She knew I would never, could never be happy. Especially without her.

And oh fuck was that true. In all my anger, in all my fury I knew. Knew with a sudden pitch perfect clarity that I needed her.

And nothing could have made me hate her more than that. Because all of a sudden my life was not mine. She had snatched a small piece of it with her easy smile and her sad eyes and I wanted it back.

"What if I don't want to go back?" she asked in a tone that was only partly curious and mostly angry.

I wanted to yell at her, shake her, strangle her, do anything but wonder why she had to ask for a reason why she should stay. It shouldn't have been me standing here wanting. It shouldn't have been me trying to hold on.

"It doesn't matter." I said instead because I was angry and I wanted her to hurt.

And she flinched and I think maybe she wanted to cry then, because her eyes were sparkling and shimmering. But I wasn't sure, because I had never seen her cry before and I think, at that moment, it's what I wanted to see.

She took a step towards me, and then another, the movement causing me to shift my focus to her feet which were moving steadily closer to me, erasing that space I had purposely put between us.

Finding myself absurdly fixated on her shoes as they moved across that gravelly stretch of space, a memory of a conversation of long ago floated through my mind, an echo from a time when we had been a little bit happy.

"I want a horse drawn carriage." She said the moment after I had turned off the light.

"What?" I muttered distractedly, half asleep and already running a mental checklist of what I had do in the morning.

"I want white roses and candles." She continued in a voice that sounded far too soft and far too dreamy for the quiet, sad girl I met in a coffee shop.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, suddenly wide awake.

"I want glass slippers." And I laughed, because it sounded so ridiculous and because it was so normal it was scary. Because suddenly she was like every other woman I had known, suddenly she was the wide-eyed girl with white dreams of lace and rings and vows.

"When I get married," she continued on in the dark, "I want to wear glass slippers. When I get married I want it to be a fairy tale." And I could feel her shift in the bed and in the dark I imagined she was lying on her side, facing me, her head resting on the palm of her hand, waiting, expectantly, for me to say something.

"Fairy tales aren't real." I said because the truth was the only thing I could give her. She was still for a moment before she turned away from me and settled into bed.

"I want them to be real." She whispered softly.

The next morning I remembered how we both pretended that black conversation had not happened. But it had. And it has been living in that space between us ever since, feeding off the half truths, the lies and the secrets, keeping us apart.

Because she wanted happily ever after and I knew it wasn't possible. Because she was still a woman with a girl's heart. After all, she was the one in the wedding dress and I was the one with a half discarded ring.

And as the past cleared from my mind she was there, in front of me, her hand curving around my face, maybe remembering, maybe searching, maybe wishing for something.

And I found I hated the way it hurt, her looking at me through eyes dazed and blurred with the past. I found I hated the feel of her fingers on my face, leaving a trailed memory of dreams that should have died long ago. I found I hated the way her touch brought them back. I hated the way she made it impossible for me to forget.

I hated the way I could no longer see beyond the anger and the regret and the pain of wondering.

Wondering what should have or might have been. I hated that I could still feel her fist squeezing my heart, even now as I try to forget.

The scent of her perfume on the air is a cliche I hate. It make me long for the indifference and the apathy of who I once was. It had been so much easier then, so much easier to be cruel than to actually love.

I still had that ring in my hand. I could feel its sharp edges cutting into my palm. I welcomed the biting pain, it made me remember why this — this could never have worked. God what was I thinking searching for optimism and trust in her arms? She was all cold sadness and I was fearless authority.

Disaster was, and had only ever been, the only thing waiting for us at the end. We'd gone into it, in the beginning, with white intentions — gleaming and new — foolishly believing that we could make something more, something right.

But we had both been broken and scarred and cruel and the filth of our lives transformed our white intentions into black compassion. Until I could only ever hate her. Hate her because I wanted her, hate her because I needed her, hate her because I loved her.

And until she could only want to love me, nothing more.

But it doesn't matter anymore because she is gone, walking away from me in her fairy tale dress and her fairy tale shoes to the fairy tale life I could never give her.

And as she walks away, her heels crunching on the ground, her hair trailing in the wind and her eyes cast forward, away from me, I find myself hating the fact that I wish — desperately — that her smile didn't make me hate her so much.

So much.

And you'll learn, in time, to be cruel — because it's easier