“Why?”
No-no-no, not that; never that. One must never ask a lover ‘why’ they are leaving (no matter how much you might want to). If one doesn’t know, then that is the answer--or at least, the most important one.
If one needs to ask ‘why’, it means that the reason either has nothing to do with you and therefore it is unlikely that your actions will change the outcome, or it means that the reason has everything to do with you and apparently, you have not even realised that this is the situation.
If this is the case, it doesn’t do to go scrambling after them, cap in hand, because it means that in order to cause one’s beloved to feel ‘beloved’, one would need to change so profoundly that ‘you’ would no longer be ‘you’. If your lover wants you to change THAT MUCH, then they don’t love you any further than you love them. You both love the idea you have of one another, not the person you each (respectively and respectfully) 'are'.
In a way, it should be a relief. But it’s exceedingly cold comfort, isn’t it . . . the understanding that when someone leaves you with no apparent reason, there is nothing to be done for it . . . one of those situations in which the answer to a question does nothing to assuage one’s ignorance, sorrow and self-doubt. One of those ‘answers’ that invariably leads to more questions and more answers in a series of diminishing returns.
“But—but what shall I do with all these feelings I don’t want to have (can’t bear)?” the broken heart asks.
“Grow” says the crocus struggling up from a crack in the street.
“Smile” says the bright sunshine on a cold day.
“Endure” says the ticking of a clock on the sideboard.
“Be grateful” says the setting sun.
“Seek oblivion” says the drunken sky.
“Seek vengeance” says a temperamental wind, tearing the last stubborn, crackling leaves from barren branches.
“Dream” says the empty cup in the small hours.
I have heard them all before, these old friends; their tired and familiar advice encircling the world like a sagacious ozone layer of good intentions, becoming quite thin in places. And so, I am not listening to any of them today.
Of greater interest at the moment, is my neighbour, a raven, balanced on the roof opposite my window. Raven carefully fluffs up and smoothes its feathers, ceremoniously flexing its wings and tamping the dusty stone with its talons, meditatively dislodging bits moss, its sad eyes bright in the dawn, calling out into an ambivalent Sunday: “I am! I am! I am!”
I am. I am. I am.
