Broken--That Felt Like a Goodbye

That felt like a goodbye

It wasn’t the slam of a door, a violent act of closure.  It wasn’t a hurtled glass to smash into smithereens.  

It wasn’t tearing up a letter, shards falling in rough uncut triangles.  It wasn’t the emptying of a vase, water and flowers strewn on the floor, stomped into petals and stems.

It wasn’t a five year old in a Toys-R-Us, screaming while being dragged out of the store without the requisite favorite toy.

It wasn’t the tightening of a smile when encountered unexpectedly.  It wasn’t the diplomacy of such encounter when “how do you do” is as close as you get to…words that had once been murmured in millimeters away.

It wasn’t the squeal of tires, leaving dark grooves in the pavement, squirreling away from the scene. 

It isn’t a ringing phone disregarded into voicemail.

It wasn’t the song that suddenly comes on the radio, in traffic, in rain, and in the quiet car-stillness when the world has shrunken and your hair is still wet from the rain…and you let a refrigerator-light blink of my memory come in and you rapidly, maybe violently turn the radio station and maybe just clench your jaw.

It wasn’t walking through a darkened parking garage and remembering a different parking garage.

It wasn’t a drink at Christmas, an eve, when discovery was clarity, and bourbon was bourbon and the what-ifs started getting bigger and soon the sky turned a slate existence and driving home the radio seemed to know what was best played for that moment.

It wasn’t a nail tapped into my chest.  It wasn’t a bruise.

It wasn’t a staple, a pinprick, a paper cut.

It wasn’t a splinter.

It wasn’t the sting of a bee.

It wasn’t the fucking boring mundane afternoon when papers and emails and decisions and data was piling up and it didn’t really touch your soul but you never let things touch your soul so nevermind but if something did than God forbid…and when you came home and threw out leftovers were there things, things that reminded, things that demanded, things that perhaps compelled you and yet you still tossed those things into the garbage.  And as you looked at the remnants was it perhaps those remnants that represented at times the best of things but were now just that…the past…as somebody else came in and wondered why you hadn’t taken the garbage out?

Rather…in the end....

it felt more like a barely lifted finger.  From somebody sitting in a chair, comfortable and cool, hands on the heavy fabric, deigning to move the forefinger up in the air, just an inch high, as I walked slowly away.

And knowing I’d been put in my place.