Stories from The Moon / Cuentos de la Luna

What a horrible thing has happened. I’ve realized I keep loving you. You and your angry stares and your warm hands. You, who broke my heart and me, hallucinating your presence. When will you pack your stuff and leave my head already? It doesn’t hurt to think about you anymore. It’s not like I’ve forgotten the pain you put me through. I haven’t forgotten that I tried everything to keep you with me. I haven’t forgotten that I wasn’t enough. That I loved you more than you could’ve possibly loved me. Here I am two years later. Finding pieces of you in strangers. How can I move on, if in moving on I am attracted to men who have your best features? There’s no getting around you. You are still, everything I ever wanted. You poisoned my heart and here I am, gasping for more. So I might as well write the story of us. The periods I type might put an end to your haunting. 

I met a man in F-. We danced, him and I, like we, you and I, used to dance in P-. He wasn’t as tall as you, but for a moment I forgot what it felt like to dance with you towering above me. Your smile, a neck and a head above my forehead. You’ve ruined me. Here I am dancing with the ghost of you. Let’s take a moment to talk about your hands. The freckles spattered across your blue veins. Constellations on frozen rivers. I can’t remember the last time I reached for your hand and you held it, welcomingly. I used to burrow my four fingers inside your hand. Your fingers covered my thumb like a spiderweb. The rhythm of walking hand in hand with you. I felt strong, like I could walk to the top of Mount Everest with you. 

Snow storm.

Avalanche.

Wreck.

I sat on a bench with the man from F- and we talked until the sun rose. He smoked. I remembered you used to smoke when I first met you. When we started dating, you stopped. Just like that, from one day to the next. The same way you stopped loving me. From one day, to the next. I should’ve seen that cold ability of yours, of letting go, so abruptly. He showed me photos of his family and the area he was from on Google Maps. I saw him again for many afternoons. He made me laugh. He was kind. He held my hand. The last time I saw him I fell for it. I am a fool. I should’ve learned from loving you that I should hibernate instead of going on a date.

The last time I saw him we were sitting on a different bench. I was telling him a story and I could tell he was listening intently. I wasn’t used to this because you rarely ever paid attention to my stories. You didn’t ask followup questions. But he did and when I turned to answer him, he was looking at me. The way you used to look at me back when you were happy to see me, when you used to wrap your arm around me in front of your friends. That look. He smiled. I asked him if I had something on my face. I could see his eyes moving from my eyes, to my nose, to my lips. He smiled and said he liked looking at me. That he liked my face. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to someone looking at me like that, not anymore. I looked into his eyes. A green pond with orange specks. Like sunlit algae. I remember thinking, I will see this man for many years. He will be in my life for a long time. 

Algae wrapped around my left ankle.

He disappeared.

I drowned.