The Tangles and Knots of Attachment

The string went through His open window and fell three stories down. It gathered on the sidewalk, it twisted on the ground. It snaked into the gutter, it drifted up the street. It tangled all the places, where once were Him and me. It snaked through that alley where I didn’t want to be. It gathered in a puddle where I hoped He would kiss me.

Once a bright white, now covered in filth, the sting wound through the city. It went through the theater, tangled itself around those two seats, the ones-front-row-center. We were always front-row-center.

It wound around the table and chairs at that sushi place where the servers knew our names.

The grocery store was so full of tangles and knots I couldn’t get through the door. The mundane was somehow the most meaningful in the end.

The string went through the park and twisted through the last few streets until it reached my building. It went up four flights of stairs and under the door of my apartment.

It wrapped around the bedposts, the couch, and kitchen stools, it filled the apartment with memories of Him.

I tried to untangle it, tried to remove the knots and reminders, but my fingers couldn’t bear it, so I gave up halfway through.

It entered the center of my chest. I wanted to pull it out. I used both hands and yanked, but it only altered the rhythm of my heart. I lurched forward in pain, the agony of pulling out a memory once loved was too much. He will remain in me, and I tangled up in Him.

He knows He’s done it, knows He’s tied me up, knows, try as I might, there’s no untangling from Him - He who is my attachment, my remnant of the past, He who is the reminder of how beautiful things can morph into grotesquerie with a changing of the heart.

I loved Him, and at night I was reminded of His absence. Night howled in through the windows to taunt me, “You’re alone,” it said, “I’ve hidden the world and left you with only your thoughts.” And as much as it was once a friend to me, to us, the night became the thing I wished to banish. But night ruled the universe, could silence the stars; who was I to tell it no?

There, in agony and unwashed clothes, I sat on the floor of my apartment, half empty of furniture, and stared out the window, into the laughing dark.

There was a knock on my door. I thought it was Him. I thought, at last, at long last, He realized His mistake and came running back. It was meant to be. This pain would be something we forgot. It would be a footnote in our memory.

I opened the door, but it wasn’t Him. It was someone else. Someone new. A new boy.

“Hello” He said, with sweetness stuck to the sound.

“Yes?” I sounded far away.

“I hope you don’t find this odd, but I live down the hall,” not odd yet, “and I’ve been watching you,” odd, “and I’m here hoping you’ll consider going on a date with me.” Very odd. Very very odd.

“Um…” With eloquence, I faltered.

“There’s a spot up on the roof. I thought maybe you’d share this bottle of Merlot with me.” He held up the bottle of wine.

“I don’t know you.”

“I know, but that’s the thing about dates, you tend to get to know people when you go on them.” He smiled, it seemed a normal smile, nothing vicious. As I stared at him, my brain put the pieces of memories together. I’d seen him in the building and down the hall. I saw him hold the elevator door open for a man in a wheelchair. I’d watched him pet dogs and say good morning to parents hurrying their children to school.

“I suppose that’s true.” I narrowed my eyes at him. I thought it might not be so bad to go up on the roof and show the night I wasn’t afraid of it. “OK.”

The view from the roof showed buildings out to the horizon, all full of people keeping the darkness out with light that spilled into the streets.

String lights protected us from that darkness.

My string trailed after me as I walked to the place where we sat. We poured the Merlot and talked.

We began with trivialities - names and birthdays, parents and hometowns. But as we drank, we found a depth in each other.

The new boy, he looked at me with eyes that only saw the good. I was pure. I was reborn in the image of his fantasy, not yet blemished by our first fight, or my habit of never closing the kitchen cabinets, or the way I take up too much of the bed. That night I was perfect, because I was still half dream.

We spoke of wishes and heartaches, of pains great and small.

“I fear I’ll never get over it, I’ll hold on to them all.” I said, or maybe it was him. Haven’t we all said it from time to time?

“You’ll be OK, and so will I, the world has so much left to show you.” The night tossed and churned around us, but it couldn’t touch me anymore.

There are moments that feel like magic. Moments that live on forever, that we wish we could live in, crawl back into when the world isn’t fair, when people remind us there must be dark to go along with the light. That moment would live on for me. My string formed a circle around us and I knew the new boy must have magic in his bones.

“You arrived at the right time. You came to shake me awake.” I sipped my glass, “Or it might be the Merlot, it might not be you at all.”

“It's me, and it’s you, and it’s us building a new present, hoping for a future. That’s all it has to be, hope. Isn’t that the best possible outcome of a first date, a little bit of hope?“

“Yes, I think so. It’s been so long since I’ve had hope.”

I realized I hadn’t thought to change. I’d come up wearing sweatpants, and with hair unbrushed. “Is this wine magical? You only see the good in me.”

“I see what is there. I see you.”

“I think I’d like to see you more, longer, again.”

“There is time. We have all the time in the world.”

The sun rose and I forgave it for being gone.