Lump

She knows as soon as she picks up the phone. Maybe because the voice coming from the other side may have taken a second too long. Maybe because before the strangely casual greeting she may have heard his anxious breathing. Somehow she knows. And between all that hello and hi and how is everything and oh you know it must be the same at your place right and yes that’s crazy who could have thought, she knows there is more. He takes a breath.

“I have to tell you, I have to get this out of me, I still love you, I can’t forget, I miss you so much, I know so much has happened, it’s been so long, but I’ve done everything, I don’t know what else to do, I feel like I’m choking, I had to tell you, you are the love of my life, I am not asking you for anything, I don’t expect anything, but I had to tell you, if you ever feel down, if you ever feel like nobody’s ever really loved you, I just want you to know that I love you more than anything in this world and I always will…”

She doesn’t say a word for a second, or two or three. He waits. And then she bursts into a stream of don’t-say-that-you-know-that-is-not-true-you-think-you-love-me-but-you-know-you-only-say-that-because-you-are-there-all-by-yourself-you-shouldn’t-tell-me-that-you-will-be-sorry-later-what-do-you-expect-of-me-please-don’t and she talks because she as she talks he is quiet and if he is quiet she won’t hear that he loves her when the mere thought of him gives her cold shivers and that he sees her as the love of his life while she sees him as a big mistake with a name, a surname and an address. But even as she talks she feels how much he suffers and the grief for all this madness floods her eyes and breaks her voice and she knows that when he hears her cry he will think that if she still cries after everything that’s happened and after so long that is because there is still something there and she fears that he will cling to this frayed thread of hope built by salty pitiful tears and nothing else.

And between the empty sentences come the full tears, because she is so, so, so sorry. Why, dear God, why do things have to be this way? How can the object of so much love give nothing in return, how can someone love one who does not love him back, how can someone love one who loves someone else, someone who doesn’t love her, someone for whom she cries other tears, these filled not with pity but pain? Why is there love even when it is never nurtured, how can it still be there even when always despised? What is this hell in which we live, at the same time with so much love and with no love at all, receiving what we neither expect nor desire while we expect and desire what we can’t have? Why? Why do things have to be this way?

But soon she runs out of those empty sentences, and then she falls silent; she realizes there is no thread left he can cling to, and she can almost feel in her own mouth the taste of his regret. In the deafening silence that follows her merciful speech, she knows that he feels small and pathetic and that he would give anything not to have heard that rejection he just heard, disguised as common sense. He murmurs something and hangs up, but she finds no relief. Because she can almost see him, so far away, sitting down, his back slumped, his head in his hands, a lump in his throat and this pain that just won’t leave him. And she finds no solace in thinking that one day the pain will go away. She knows it will not. She knows.