Ramen flying across the kitchen

If you asked me what I missed about her the most I’d have a hard time just pointing out one thing. Maybe it was her laugh that carefully mimicked an out-of-breath squirrel. Maybe it was her radiance that quickly filled any room she’d enter, yet maybe it was her touch, that never failed to send shudders down my spine. Be that as it may, it was over and had been over for months. Our once charming relationship was ravaged by the pandemic like many other things. We tried to counter the effects of isolation and loneliness with ideas full of creativity and panache. First, our apartment became a glitzy ballroom with the charm of the 1920’s Plaza Hotel, at least in our minds. Here we tangoed about, trying to imitate the antics of Al Pacino’s dancing during “Scent of a Woman”. When the thrill wore out, we then splurged on speakers and a projector trying to create our very own home cinema, filling our living room with the sounds and languages of the world. Nevertheless, we were found seeking a new endeavor after a short while, this was an easy undertaking, seeing as though our unused brains were ripe with ideas. Cooking lessons, poetry workshops, learning a new language; none of these new activities could sway the colossal white elephant present in the middle of the room. The pandemic had pitted our raw nature head to head, it had revealed parts of us we had no idea existed and weren’t planning on revealing. With no weekend soirées with friends, the visits with aunts and uncles a distant memory, there was not much else to distract us from the crumbling edifice we stood on.

After similar trysts, weeks passed and monotony ensued. As the news increased in panic and fear our relationship started breaking at the seams. Our good-natured attempts to counteract the negative psychological effects brought on by the pandemic became less and less effective. After the six-month mark the fights started, which slowly but surely increased in crescendo until our relationship was left reeling. The pandemic, like a determined boxer stalking his exhausted opponent, proceeded to unleash a flurry of striking blows carrying the force of a thousand knives and successfully picking apart what was left of our love. The end came swiftly. I remember arriving from the grocery store to an empty apartment. The shock caused me to drop the bags with enough force to send her favorite ramen flying across the kitchen. When I entered the bedroom my heart began to sink. Everything seemed drab and lifeless, as if someone turned off an invisible light switch that controlled the world’s color palette. The grays and navy blues of my clothes hanging idly by in one corner of the closet appeared to be missing the vivid color and flowery designs of my girlfriend’s dresses. A lonely piece of paper sitting on the bed dashed the faint hopes I had left that she might return later. You could see through my girlfriend’s brazen nature in the final two words she left me. It read like the shortest, saddest story the world had ever seen. She even added a period accentuating the finality of things.

-I’m leaving.-

             The preceding days meshed into each other as an orchestra of shadows with no end or beginning in sight. The night was day and day was night. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months; the only thing reminding me of the continuous passage of time was the length of my facial hair. I arose one day in the afternoon, with a rumbling headache and a mouth as dry as the Sahara. I remember having a duel with a bottle of scotch the previous night. This had become a recent tradition of mine, lulling my senses to sleep with a trusty bottle of scotch every night. I found in the aftermath of our rupture that sobriety had an edge to it, like a surgeon’s scalpel that could cut bone with a flick of the wrist, so I avoided it like a plague of locusts. I caught a glimpse of my reflection before I entered the shower. Such a shocking image that I didn’t have a choice but to look closer; scruffy brown beard that covered my throat, oily hair reaching my shoulders, skin and bone. I don’t think I've ever looked as disheveled as I did that day, if I hadn’t known better I’d think I was auditioning for the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar”. As the cold water enveloped my skin, one of the rare moments of enjoyment, the freezing water, the only thing that would erase her image from my mind for some much-needed respite. A shriek coming from the street pulled me from my trance. As I peeked through the window at the street down below I could see a sea of commotion, a parade of people from all walks of life trudging along the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder, and exclaiming:

-“It’s finally over!”-

I decided to shave. The ordeal took more than an hour; only God knows when I had my last visit to the barbershop. As I finished shaving and trimming my hair I could finally begin to recognize myself. Apart from my scrawny demeanor, something was different about me, a hardening of sorts that was hard to put into words. You could sense it through my eyes, revealing a deep well of repressed feelings bubbling to the surface. After donning the last gift of hers, a green polo shirt, ever so cherished for the memories it represented; I set out into the world, my mind a pastiche of memories I had with her, places we had gone, the happy moments, sad ones, and everything in between. I locked the door behind me and started walking without a thought of where I would go. It was the middle of fall, trees and the heaps of fallen leaves cast a brownish aura on everything in sight, creating a beautiful combination full of gloom and nostalgia causing me to feel as if I was a character in an Andrew Wyeth painting. As I kept walking I saw faces for the first time in over a year. Kids, mothers and fathers, couples, young and old, policemen, students, cats and dogs, birds chirping across the sky a beautiful tune. They all carried happy and hopeful faces, but not without a tinge of sadness in their eyes, much like mine. I wondered what calamities had befallen their personal lives throughout their time in captivity.

As I got home, a feeling of heaviness set in as I walked up the staircase into the lonely apartment. A heap of laundry on the couch, pizza boxes on the floor, and a sink full to the brim with dirty dishes. I sighed as I set out on the mammoth task of clearing the rubble left behind by the roaring tanks of my lost love. I was done just before midnight, a manic urge for whiskey, almost vampiric in nature, nearly overtook me. I decided not to, not this time. I went into the bedroom and sat on the chair facing my desk, a blank piece of paper staring me dead in the eye. Without much thought I started writing. If you asked me what I missed about her the most I’d have a hard time just pointing out one thing…