Vacuum

There was a small vacuum inside my heart. Every time you told me you were tired, it turned on and sucked a little bit of joy. I felt a pinch, and I grimaced in anger and sadness. When you told me you didn't have time for me then, maybe later, it took some more. The memory of you looking at me in bed was thrown into the vast nothing of nowhere. When you forgot to tell me that you loved me, it took even more. The smell of the first bouquet you gave me. The feel of your arms that night in your car, while I whispered for you to never leave me. The taste of your lips the first time we kissed. And the pinch became a squeeze, and the squeeze morphed into a grip. I imagine my heart shriveling, getting smaller and smaller after every day I didn't see you smile at me, after every perfunctory greeting on the 17th of each month, the staccato of routine managing to get through the buzz of the fuzzy line.

After all that I am sure, right now, that my heart is a raisin. The vacuum is bigger, too. It has started to take my lungs that I can't seem to speak, more so when you ask how I am. I would have loved to say that there are times that I have to stop working just so I could stare at my phone's screen, wishing and hoping and begging for a hello. But I end up saying okay because it was all the air left in me. I feel it in my stomach, too. It grumbles even after I eat. It does not stop, and I have to type louder and louder lest my colleagues hear it. They may think it is me, complaining.

I am scared of the day, dear, that the vacuum takes everything inside me and I am left an ugly shell. I am scared of the growing black pit that creeps steadily to my throat, to my limbs. My fingers are cold. I wish they could touch you again. But you are far, and perhaps that is for the best. What I am frightened of the most is on the day I see you and reach out, the vacuum will take you, too, and I will never know where you have gone.

November Playlist: George Ezra Edition

I don’t know how he does it, but his songs are like capsules that hold my powdery memories. Every time I listen, it’s as though I’m swallowing a pill and letting my cells soak in the hazy film.

1. Budapest (“But for you I’d leave it all”)
2. Drawing Board (“Lately I’m a heartache, I’m a desperate plan in hand, I’m a blueprint in the sand”)
3. Blame It On Me (“What you waiting for?”)
4. Don’t Matter Now (“Well it won’t last and it won’t stand, It don’t matter now”)
5. Shotgun (“The sun it changed, in the atmosphere, architecture unfamiliar, I can get used to do this”)
6. All My Love (“All my love is yours, all my time is ours, all my reckless dreams and my restless hours”)

 Listen to these in order. Go on.