I hadn’t driven very far, just a few hundred yards down the street.  I didn’t quite know where I was heading; the car was aimlessly directed.  I could have driven around in circles for all my mind knew.  My legs were leaden, heavy with the sight of her taut face, of the way she tried to hold back everything and yet revealed the innermost part of herself to me.  I always used to forget how well I knew her until moments like that; the moments when I saw her face and realized that the intimacy between us was never very far away.  I had loved that moment, that tender touch of understanding and knowledge.  In those fleeting seconds, I had loved her more than ever before; embraced in a tacit bond that was the only thing I craved more than I did her.

But I wished now that I didn’t know her that well. There was a part of me that wished I had never known her at all, assuaged only by the deep abiding grief of a lover who knew too much.  If I could have taken back the sight of her with that woman – that interloper, then I would have done.  I hated myself for wanting to live in ignorance and believe blindly in the relationship that had been my rock for so many years.  I hated myself for having the moral fortitude to take her to task over her betrayal.  But most of all, I hated myself for still loving her.

I stopped the car, pulling over to the side of the road and letting the engine idle.  My fingers were gripping the steering wheel so hard that I felt the leather seam biting into my skin, but I couldn’t seem to stop holding on.  I couldn’t let go.  I couldnt relinquish my grasp on the solid, although the incorporeal haunted me and willed me to uncurl my fingers, allow myself to move.  Move on.

It was only when the hot salt tears trickled over my lips that I realized I was crying.  My vision blurred by pain, my throat tightened in hunger for what could never be sated, I finally let go of the steering wheel and folded my arms over my chest.  I leaned forwards then, giving a choked, roughened voice to the pain that ripped at my heart, as though by gripping my skin, by digging my fingers into the white cotton of my tank top I could attempt to keep it all inside.  As though I could prevent my heartache from spilling out and bleeding across the white, staining it with fear and sorrow and all those feelings I had convinced myself were not mine to experience.