The Vice and Versa of Love After Life

[Last summer, the aftermath of gruesome local events bought suicide a one-way ticket to my subconscious. It was a pushy guest, and far outstayed its welcome.]

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I’m going to explain now that I have the time to do it, so listen. You’re not the only one I love; I know it’s not as simple as that. I love everyone who wears glasses or baubles in their ears, and beyond all of them I love everyone who wears black, and everyone who sings themselves to sleep and tattoos themselves when no one’s looking and talks to animals and does any of the other things I imagined you did. I love them all, which means that I love you and furthermore I love you, and over and over again I love you.

See, I know exactly how it works. I know how the layers of my love fit into each other, and I know how each gear spins within the machine of my love. At first it was too complicated for me to understand and apparently everyone else figured it out before I did, but I know now. That’s not what matters, though. What matters is that you knew too, and for that reason alone, you should have done something.

You didn’t even have to look at me, but you should have looked at the sky more than you did. You should have swum in the ocean until the saltwater cleaned your head, you should have stood in the rain holding a key until lightning struck you and changed your mind. You should have gotten really, really high. You should have had surgery, you should have had an exorcism – did you think about this? Did you sit down and think about what you could do instead? Did you spend even a tenth of the time thinking about this as I have?

You should have cut your hair so it didn’t weigh your head down, but you let it break your neck; you picked up a razor and you could have shaved your head and walked out of the bathroom, but you cut your wrists. Did you think as you did this? Did you look in the mirror and think? You know these are rhetorical questions, because of course you weren’t thinking. I spent a long time in love and not thinking, so I know what not thinking feels like.

In fact, I didn’t think until you made me think, and then I thought about everything. I thought about you, I thought about me (but more about you), I thought about each of my skin cells that had made contact with you, I thought about every word that you spoke and then the endless permutations of words I could say in reply. I went sleepless for days thinking about the single time that I saw you naked. I studied these things; I made theories and calculations and equations of these things.

Eventually I even ventured to think about this intimidating love-making machine that had somehow showed up in my life, and there were many thoughts to think about that; I thought about whether it was me or you that built it, I thought about what it made me do and what it was made of, and I studied all of its components until I understood how it worked. I intellectualized love, and I wish I hadn’t. Now that you’ve left I’m thinking more than ever, and I have nothing to show for it. I don’t get closer to you by thinking, because you stopped thinking.

You flipped the switch to your brain and your heart and bought a ticket to some weird remote place - underground, hell, heaven, some magical ether where nothing hurts, whatever – anywhere I’m not. I need to reach you, I need to touch you and speak to you, and I try to do this by thinking or walking or praying, but you’re somewhere where nothing I do can bring me nearer to you. I know this but still I try, I try to outsmart it, I try to think until I transcend thought, meditate until I transcend death, pray until God breaks through the clouds and brings me to you - you know this, you know how I try. Surely you understood what would become of me once you left.

And so I ask you: did you spare a moment to pity me, running in place looking for you? Did you laugh or shed a tear for me? Why did you condemn me to life on a conveyor belt? Did you mean for me to run until my heart breaks? Should I jump and try to grab your hand instead, or did you intend for me to fall off of the edge and look for you below? And what did you think of this monumental machine that governs my heart? Did you know that without you here to help me I would lose control of it and it would start to rule my head as well? Should I have broken it down and rebuilt it differently, or should I surrender to its control? What do I do with all the love that it produces if I can’t send that love to you? Where do I go if I can’t go to you? Should I run away or sink my roots into your grave? Do I live as a cripple or a martyr? As man or machine? As a lover or a fighter?

What am I supposed to do?