seasons of heartbreak

-Before heartbreak, in Autumn

We view the glittering town from our hill, on our bench, by our favourite tree.

Cars chase endlessly on the road below creating the sound of a distant waterfall, we have never been so peaceful. An electricity pole looms over the road assertively like the Eiffel Tower, and behind it, grassy hills cascade into each other forming nature’s patchwork quilt. We huddle under it indulgently.

You point out the many cigarette butts littered below our feet and say they are beautiful, because each one signifies a different person’s memory, another conversation, a moment in the life of someone who has imbibed the same view as us.

It tastes like fresh smoke and sour star and orange glow behind wooden window frame. I want to catch the stars on the tip of my tongue and feel them fizzing like lemon sherbet. I lean into your arms in a red duffle coat with a matching nose.

It sounds like the comfort of parents tinkering with breakfast downstairs.

It smells of life.

The familiar setting seems different now, from our vantage point. It is new, promising. Many streetlights peep through a watercolour sky, refreshing flecks. I feel like climbing into the back of a vegetable cart and smelling wood and ripe marrow and quietness. I could ride through a stream, a liquid tree, leaves rustling, and wrap myself up in you, and a genuine smile with no particular thought behind it.

All I can do is try to cling on without over analysing the feeling, it washes over in waves like warm water lapping at you in a bath. The air caresses like a cat wrapping around bare ankles.

I might even know that I am happy


-During heartbreak, in Winter

The ache feels like a sound; a loud one that drowns out my other senses. It’s the sound of an aeroplane moaning above, or the sound of breath channelling into the neck of a glass bottle. More the latter. An aeroplane implies freedom and I do not feel free,
just separate. Like a broken pencil lead, brushed aside with indifference.

Remembering the days of ‘us’ is like the taste of mulled wine; frustratingly nostalgic, nearly transmitting me back to times of happiness, but not quite. I want to tear at the almost-feeling with bare, meat hungry claws. Pull it back into now like a blind or tape measure.

-Recovering from heartbreak, in Spring and Summer

I am working again, in both senses of the word. The fact that I am working means that;
One, I am not broken anymore. Two I am getting out of bed to earn money. Essentially I am functioning. Functioning in society.

This means that I can observe life from behind sugar pastel squares of ice cream in a stall. I can hand dribbling cones to happy couples, corpulent toddlers, shrunken OAP’s.

Here, half hidden like a floating torso, I notice many things; a small spider swinging casually towards me the colour of an unripe tomato. A cloud shaped like an actual cloud, one that kids draw. Snapshots of conversation that can be joined together into a silly poem. The difference between children’s swivelling heads and their parents speeding past with tunnel vision. The fact that only elderly people buy rum and raisin. Dirt under my nails. The sun melting like caramel into the sky. A discarded cicada skin in the grass. The slight prickling burn of my skin.

Noticing these things prove that I am working, that I am not broken. That you have not ruined me.

People that buy ice-cream alone make me feel sad. A couple decide to share a vanilla cone, it fills me with nausea.

--
I just picked up the ice-cream scoop and realised that I no longer want to gouge someone’s eyes out with it. Your eyes. Mine. I am no longer angry. I also don’t scowl when people ask for double-cones. Those Siamese ice cream holders that I once wanted to stomp into nothingness along with anything else that slightly implied couples, pairs, togetherness.

Oh and I like chocolate, you liked vanilla, we never had much in common anyway.

--
The sky has completely stopped crying.

Apparently some people don’t mind if the cones are slightly chipped. This comforts me. They still work, still do the job, still hold ice cream. They may not be perfect but they are still wanted.

Calmness pervades the air, like wet grass, the last beads of rain evacuating a washing line, the lightness after a hysterical outburst. Catharsis.

--
I can read again now. Each crumbling page smells of wafer and cherry liqueur, I notice this and welcome the elusive feeling of hunger. I can also sleep again without dreading a morning of parched mouth and lurching stomach. I can hear birds and lawn mowers and people laughing.

The sound of aeroplanes occasionally brings back the ache. But it is summer now, time will heal and dissolve and wipe it away like a huge Etch-a-Sketch.

It’s weird to think that I will probably look back on an expurgated version of today with a sigh and think ‘I was happy’.