the sad memory of magic

Something about a breakup naturally makes you start thinking about relationships in general-- what they mean, who you are when you are in them, and the parts of you that you sometimes lose when they have run their course. It's made me think back upon the loves of my life-- each loss a unique lesson in what can go wrong in the space between two people.

I've seen many things go wrong. There have been imbalances of affection: those I have loved more deeply, those who have been more passionate about me. There have been insurmountable course-of-true-love obstacles: too-great discrepancies in age or maturity, too-little communication; the basic incompatibility of personalities, and, in the case of my high school sweetheart, incompatibility of gender. There have been relationships that have come to dispassionate endings with quiet, sad resignation, after trying too long to make them something they weren't built to be. But one of my greatest heartaches came in the form of what may be looked back upon as a simple case of the wrong timing.

I never meant to love him. There were many reasons, but among them, we were coworkers. Despite the odds, we gravitated toward one another with the unstoppable force of a physics experiment gone awry.

He was handsome, but something else drew me to him. Maybe something about his self-deprecating humor, his wit, his ability, like me, to go from intense to silly in the same short breath. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn't help but see through the cracks of what others found to be an intimidating facade. Or maybe it was something in his deep, soulful eyes-- a sadness, a longing. Maybe they mirrored something in my own.

We'd always had exceptional rapport. We made terrible jokes that endeared us to one another. We laughed at things that seemed lost on others. Our conversations grew increasingly longer, and we quite suddenly began finding ourselves standing in darkened parking lots after work, long after the last of our coworkers had left. I felt the stirrings of something important. I felt it in the way he looked at me, in the electric energy of his nervous pacing. I felt it in every hug goodnight that lasted a little too long, but never long enough. I felt it in the lyrics of the songs he sang. "Bring Me to Life," he implored. "Save me," he whispered.

We began to spend time together after work. It had been that magical time of year, what e.e. cummings described aptly as "in just-spring"-- the time of the season when things that had been too-long asleep found themselves just awakening. First flowers began their skyward ascent through the soft earth. The world around us had begun to blossom.

One day, we made plans to go ice skating with friends. I laced up my rental skates and quietly prayed for courage in lieu of athleticism. I stumbled over the rubber flooring to the ice with all the gracelessness of a newborn giraffe. With both feet on the ice, I grappled with the wall. He was already skating laps that looked deceptively easy. He swished behind me. "You have to let go," he said. "You can't be afraid to fall. It's going to happen. You just have to learn to fall the right way." I sighed. "Do you trust me?" he asked, and I really did. I let my hand go from the ledge, and he found it with his. "Come with me," he said.

We found ourselves spending most of our free time together, and magically making time where it didn't seem to exist. And, for a while, it really didn't seem to exist-- we lived in stolen moments. I showed him life's simple joys: playing on the swings at the beach at night, wishing on dandelions, hiking out to my favorite tree in the arboretum. He introduced me to new games, and language, and culture. We played well-matched games of four-lettered Scrabble in the park. We marveled at starry skies on crystal clear nights, with Van Morrison on the radio, playing soft and low.

Just after midnight on his birthday, we found ourselves standing in a friend's driveway, not wanting to say goodnight. Not ready to say the obvious. He gave me a hug that lasted too long, and before I could stop myself, I blurted it out. "Is there something more going on between us?" I asked. I stated my case with uncharacteristic brazenness. He started to shiver.

"I don't know if it's cold or if it's the adrenaline," he laughed weakly. "Can we talk about this in the car?" he asked.

We sat in the car, in the driveway, for what seemed like a long time before he spoke. It wasn't the cold. The heat was on, and, still, he shook. "It's obvious that there's something between us," he said, his words measured. "But there are problems." And he laid them out neatly, scientifically-- the undeniably incompatible worlds we found ourselves belonging to. Stuck, I thought. But he asked if he could hold me, and I lost myself in him, enveloped in his arms.

"I'm listening to your heartbeat." I sighed.

"Sinus tach?" he asked.

I giggled, inhaling in the moment. "Sinus tach,"

For a short time, we lived pretty happily in a world where not much else seemed to exist-- in a world that was ours. But the demands of the real world pressed on-- eventually, too great to be ignored. It had all the makings of what could have been a great love story, but the timing was off. It was like watching a movie where the picture and sound didn't quite match up, and the actors' lips moved at all the wrong times. We were in two different places that we'd tried to bring together, but there were things that were fixed. Maybe someday we could make it work, but there were decisions to be made in the present.

"You're worth waiting for," he told me. "The question is... am I worth waiting for?"

I bit my lip. "You're worth waiting for," I told him, my heart sinking with every syllable. "But what you're talking about isn't waiting. It's standby. There are no guarantees."

He nodded. "You're right. It's not even a fair question to ask. I just... have to get my head and my heart on the same page," he sighed.

I nodded, not wanting to prod, but unable to help it. "Which am I?" I asked.

He closed his eyes for a long moment. "The heart," he said.

Although, for me, the heart has never failed to win out, it lost for him. I think it was always supposed to. There were things we needed to move on to, to accomplish in life-- and I've always been confident that everything works out for the best, in the end. Sometimes, in a love against the odds, the odds win. They aren't the stories we love, because they aren't exceptional; they are the norm.

But when it's over, when the last card has been played on the table, and we bear scars in all of the vulnerable places that love once touched, all we are left with is the sad memory of magic, and a single thought that lingers: nothing haunts like 'almost'.