Für Bastian

I love you, Bastian, I never got to tell you, but I love you.

I love you and I don’t think that feeling is going to go away.

I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing that I didn’t say anything this weekend… What good would it do to know that you love me too if we can’t be together anyway? Or what good would it do to know that you don’t love me if that’s only going to break my heart? The day we met seem so long ago, back there in my beloved Querétaro. When I saw you the first time I thought, “My God, I could really fall in love with that man”. With your violin and your long, lean figure, with your golden curls that managed to cover your lapis lazuli eyes at the most untimely times. I was so right. And we talked, and we laughed, and we lived as if those were the happiest times of our lives. I wouldn’t know if they were. You taught me all about poetry, music, Mozart, Beethoven, Benedetti and Baudelaire; about diving into the deepest parts of ourselves to bring out symphonies with our thoughts. I found meaning in the most meaningless things by your side. With you I learned what it is to feel as free as the wind of Querétaro. Believe me, I was happy with you, happy as I hadn’t been in years, but I was also suffering sorely. Maddie was there, beautiful, amazing as always. And you were together, from the day I met you both. I adore her, it’s impossible not to. Even now she stirs tenderness and admiration in me. Back then I couldn’t stand hurting her. Now I know that things could’ve been different.

When I visited you I didn’t suspect a thing. No one told me a single word. You still wore your wedding ring, as if it was a part of your finger. Even when you had written saying that it was all over two months ago, definitely. How many times did this one make now? Three? Four? Five attempts that clashed with the desire to be close to you above all others? Not from everyone, just from me, apparently. Was it only me?

You’d hide from my glance unnecessarily; from the recitals in Queretaro when you took advantage of your locks to avoid looking at me from the stage, to your half-written letters in which you wouldn’t say any more than necessary. I should have accepted it, just like a farewell stretched by the instability of imprudent emotions.

How could I have been so blind, that even after flying across the ocean and entering your home you hid from me? How could I have been so blind that I never realised that Maddie’s presence had become ethereal in your letters? How was I so blind that I couldn’t see your pain when you saw me standing there?

And now you’re so far away, and she’s far away with you, forever in your mind, and maybe also in your heart, oblivious to the fact that she’s said goodbye to us, to you and your restless love.

Strands of guilt move after me, along the German train lines, second by second, as I am now the one distancing herself. My life spins inside my head; the words I never said… the words I said… the words I yelled. The words you heard, the words I swallowed… the words that touched her ears even though it all seemed false.

You said it time and again, that it was really not my fault. What I said and what I didn’t, that’s something else. Another reality. Another lifetime, possibly.

Those were your words. Words, words and violins. You played again the day I arrived. You looked up at me from your place on the stage for the first time. Everyone met me and congratulated me; I don’t quite know why, perhaps just because of social discomfort.

We walked around the squares and side streets of Cologne that night; you played another melody meant for me, sad and subtle, like the Autumn leaves falling into the water in a fountain or creek.

You told me your story, all the clarity of a reality that never existed. How she showed us one face when her real one was completely different; how in the end she stopped sighing and instead wrapped herself in screams and rants. How she had been like that from the beginning, how you already knew but didn’t want to confront it; that you went back to her every time because of your family history, because you’d known her always, because you knew it couldn’t be any different. That you saw her fall in love and couldn’t do anything but offer her unconditional love; you had to stay with her because he couldn’t stand her anymore. That all the while she kept going back to him over and over, after Querétaro, you couldn’t do anything but tell yourself that she was happy and that this was the best thing for both of you. That when he decided that Maddie’s moods would change only by staying with him permanently, that with a baby she was bound to stabilize, you stood back and watched her belly grow… that only then were you able to let her go. That when I told you the first time it had been your mistake not wanting to listen, not changing the last six years. That it wasn’t my fault, you said over and over, and I add it here again because those words burn my skin.

You told me another thing, too: that I am who I’ve always been to you.

I couldn’t ask anything else. You leave me with both a yes and a no.

It’s probably just an illusion. The shield I carry. Never fall in love with someone from your own city, better to keep them as far away as possible. It’s probably stupid of me; I don’t notice things around me… and the fact that Maddie – either of them – did it too, or worse, is no comfort.

How could I really know what you feel for me? I would love to find a way that didn’t involve a permanently broken heart. I would love to be sure of my own feelings. Keep her apart from you.

My heart aches for you. Forty-five minutes after we said farewell, my heart aches for you.

I think you love me too. I think you love me and that’s why you shielded yourself in the party you threw so that all your friends could meet me… But if you also love me, well, than that’s probably also an illusion.

Was that afternoon we spent laying under a tree, writing poems for the clouds, an illusion? Was that night when, after your concert, we walked over to Guerrero Square and you played your music between the fountains? Was it, really, an illusion when we passed in front of Las Gardenias right as the musicians played Making Love Out Of Nothing At All, and you took my hand to dance right between all the fascinated tourists?

You never cheated on Maddie; at least not with me. Or am I mistaken even in that fact, and those pleasurable moments constitute an infidelity already? And in that case, why? And why the ring still, after months from her goodbye? Is it then an illusion that we’re the sensible ones and she’s not?

I could ask myself those questions and even so never get an answer. I could waste myself in a new unfinished goodbye, or perhaps just close this chapter now and never look back. The problem is that this is something that we need to agree on. As long as one of us opens the door, the other one won’t be able to keep from entering.

I wonder if it’s good for us to keep these illusions alive, or should we risk the painful emptiness of reality?

Today the Rhine will continue flowing, and so will it do tomorrow, and for thousands, millions of years. And so will I, no matter what. The Rhine will continue flowing, and so will I.

~*~

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