ii.

portrait of a bolter who regrets

yesterday i got my insurance claim back.

what happened is this. i used to be the owner of the house of love. it was a beautiful thing, you would’ve loved it. it sat right on the outskirts of the beach, a short walk to the water. the fridge was populated with a variety of fresh fruit juices and syrupy snacks, and we spent the summer before last painting its stucco exterior various shades of pink, right down to the dark pink heart above our bedroom window, somewhat like a lighthouse looking over the wine-dark sea.

of course the house of love burned down. doesn’t everything? one of the conditions for life is death. i learned that in seventh grade science class and it scares me, but now it just chills me out. every snicker-snack beat of my broken heart, a drum someone’s still hitting even though it’s punctured down the middle, every contraction and relaxation reminds me that one day there will be a last, hollow, heavenly beat.

anyway, i had to think about this when i got the insurance claim back, because the person on the other end seemed to think that i had burned the house down myself. they aren’t wrong, per se, i definitely lit the match and dropped it and—well, you know, i shouldn’t say—the point is that they aren’t wrong i burned the house of love down but it was not my fault. i was under the eminently false impression that the house was flame resistant. but i couldn’t explain that to the people at the insurance company, because they wouldn’t understand why i had tried to set the house on fire to begin with, and also because i don’t care enough about the money to argue over it.

i heard that we only run from the things that truly scare us. this is my first summer without you and i am sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool, hoping that i never have to come up for air. i can tell you that it’s true i ran from you because you scared me, because the prospect of living my life enshrined in devotion to someone who the entire world told me i was wrong to want terrified the hell out of me, because i thought that i was better off safe behind a white picket fence than taking a risk i thought was doomed to fail. i think a lot of things, i have too much time to think over it, there are too many scenes from the house of love painted on the backs of my eyelids for me to sleep through the night. when i stay up too late i start to think my organs are failing. my tongue goes stiff in my mouth and i never know why, i’m not a doctor, but when it does i want my last words to be your name. i’ve never wanted them to be anything else. before i knew you i never thought about it.

you must know i would have done anything for you except wait. now i think i might spend the rest of my life waiting for you to want to see me again. if it ever happens. isn’t that funny? how my fears became my fate? when i was really little, i thought lemony snicket writing i will love you if i never see you again and i will love you if i see you every tuesday was the most romantic thing anyone could say. now that i’m older (but maybe still little, in the grand scheme of things, maybe i have time to change) i know that it is. the house of love, still in my back pocket, every time i’m looking to explain why i’m so ruined: i will love you if i never see you again, because i fumbled my chance to see you every tuesday.

sometimes i pass by your house and i look up into your window—it’s in the same place i wanted ours to be, when i painted the dark pink heart on the house of love—and i think: if i could, i would pull my heart out of my chest and leave it at your door. let you do whatever you want with it. in my chest it just feels like roadkill, a relentless reminder of our aborted relationship. i see your mother turn through the window and i keep walking.

at the intersection i see a girl who looks like me: taller, though, better eyeliner, bangs cut in a straight line. she takes the time to get them done, maybe, doesn’t stand in her bathroom hacking away. i’d be offended if this is my replacement but i can’t say i don’t understand. people like my model, they just want a newer version. only you didn’t, not until i burned down the house of love and got in the car with the money and was too scared to speak to you again, so i can’t blame you like all the rest. i turn: there’s a little free library with a glass window. i unfold a piece of cardboard, i write with a lipstick that cost forty-five dollars, i leave it in the window: TEXT ME. CALL ME. I’M SORRY. i think i submitted that insurance claim just so i would hear back from someone.

when i stepped outside the house of love, i heard the waves crashing into the shore. i saw the sun set on the marvellous horizon, i inhaled the smell of your smoke. and then i made all of it a memory, so much the better to be preserved on my wall, in my apartment on brokenhearts boulevard, only: i want it back. i want you back, even when the sunsets were dim and ashy and i didn’t understand why you didn’t pick up the phone and you told me you didn’t understand my dreams. you understood so much of me. the 1% is negligible error. i’m sorry about the fire. come back.

there isn’t anywhere i can go to escape this.

i’ve travelled to the far corners of the globe, the bottom of a bottle, tasted other people’s spit in mouth and threw it back up when they left. how can i impress upon your memory that i’ve only ever wanted you, that every other lover i’ve held has been fed a steady diet of lies, that in the absence of reconciliation i fear i’ll never be able to move out of my apartment on brokenhearts boulevard, never be able to leave the ashes of the house of love behind, never able to build something new? i can’t bear all these tastes. i cannot will not should not stay in this solitude, but the revolving door of men i can’t love is worse. without you my choices are: a life tormented by your ghost, a life tormented by a thousand safe options that will never be you.

(i won’t stay with them. i laugh when they believe me.)

so i burned down the house of love, so i submitted a false claim, so i broke your heart, and in doing so cleaved mine down the middle…

so, will you call me back?