“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” ~E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
It’s so easy to live in memories because you know how they begin and how they end.
They are the sweetest chapters of your life, akin to your favorite chapters in a book that you can re-read at your leisure. They are safe and require no amendment to your recollection, because they truly were the most perfect moments of your life.
I revisit them often, more often than I should, I confess, but at present I am left with nothing but the memories that completed my life.
She was the muse for whom I had written the pages of our lives. Her whispers were the turning of the pages. Her affections comprised the prose. Her affection was the cover that shielded me from the worst version of myself, and her presence was the spine that held my life together.
Where I once watched my favorite romantic comedy: Nottinghill, Holiday, and The Story of Us, I know close my eyes and replay the story of us.
Despite the happy ending found in our most memorable moments, our story did not conclude with a happily ever after.
Now she’s the closed book sitting on a shelf that I dare not open.
She’s my favorite ballad, but I won’t listen to the song.
I couldn’t prevent her from leaving anymore than she could prevent me from loving her. And God did I love her.
I confess that I still do.
The moon will have to cease returning at night before she leaves my dreams.
The snow will need to cease being a ubiquity of winter before she will cease to exist as a part of my soul.
This, my friends, is the epitome of love.
No song can be sung, and no story can be written without her living in my heart.
She wandered into it against her better judgment and has become a prisoner of heaven while I linger in the depths of hell.
I’ll dance with her in the dark, in the shadows of memory, where no one else will know how to navigate the terrain of my existence as only she did.
She was the love that lured me to the heights of passion and released me to the depths of sorrow. My heart never broke in her embrace, yet it shattered into a million pieces when to galaxies collided and I lost.
The inescapable gravity that pulled me into the darkness of her absence has redefined my existence, and what I thought I wanted has become the antithesis of what I need.
Her.
My muse, my memory, my love story.
Felix Alexander Writer 