“Did she make your heart beat faster than I could?“

I can’t even listen to angry, 90’s, women singers anymore because he loved them. We listened to them on every road trip, singing until we had no more room for words in our heads or lungs. He took them away from me. So now I only listen to less than ideal rock bands. I scream the blood pouring out from my heart at 100 miles an hour as I reminisce about how he looked at me with sad eyes every last time we met, taking away my ability to leave the red imprint of my hand across his paled cheek. He fooled my emotions by burying his head in my chest and telling me how he’d had to drown the week away with bottles of emptiness to get through it without me. My limp, defeated hand had no power to move from those few words.

He took away my ability to cry when he told me he couldn’t stand to see my eyes turn green anymore. He could always tell when he’d stepped past the line we cautiously danced around because they’d slowly turned the color of an angry sea as I tried to hold back the hurricane begging to be set free. I always said I’d give my life away to the man that noticed how easily my eyes changed colors, now I’d give anything to have my life back.

He knew just how to touch me. One hand here, gently on my knee, a light finger pressed on my waist to comfort my nerves, a kiss on my neck to make me feel wanted, wild nights gave my body an excuse to be his. His lips never found my ears though. The touch of insecurity, it made me pull away from him. He never wanted me that far from him.

I think of two drums echoing in my ears as we sometimes teased and played. The excitement our now damaged hearts heard, that short while ago, will replay like a broken record in a locked room. The lifeline of our human selves never forgets, it’s a gift and a curse. We had always laughed at couples with matching tattoos and swore we’d never be like them and yet here I am, with his name forever imprinted on my delicate heart, never to be forgotten.

He is never forgotten, only mourned like the passing of a summer. Mourned until a new season awakens and begins, and then it starts all again. So next time, I’ll brace myself for the impact of our anxious hearts colliding.