It was a soft erosion, a wave on the periphery of a periphery, lapping against loosely packed soil. Earth sloughed degree by degree, subtle enough not to register in the day-to-day. Words said, looks shared that hastened a process that had been set into motion from the offset. I didn’t realize what was happening until the ground had begun to collapse beneath my feet. Love comes in fast; a fury of heat, of embrace, the chaotic tumult of shared experience and fear and unknown and lust and stability. Losing it is like trying to hold onto sand. No matter how hard you grasp, it slips, and slips, until you’re left clutching the last few grains, a semblance of something that used to be all encompassing.
Losing Kit was inexorable, winding paths near-parallel but never colliding. Too many differences overlooked. Too many concessions made. But, dammit, we tried. I tried. And, for years, we succeeded. Love was steady, a constant in lives that were anything but. Changes in attitude spoken, discussed, and later forgotten. Slights so minute they could be discarded as nothing, but that pile of nothing grew and grew until it loomed over us.
There was nothing to blame. That was the most hopeless aspect of it all. It wasn’t someone else. It wasn’t work. It wasn’t some great failure. It just was. Something had flickered and died, and I could stir nothing within myself but acceptance. There would be quiet hours of tears, but there was no regret. No malice. There was nothing either of us could have done to prevent the tide from overtaking us, and I was okay with it.
Kit never knew. She never got to know that I had lost it, that thread, that spark, that something. Or, maybe, she did. I would never get to know, either. Hiding it was easy, natural. Excuses made, time taken, and fissures grew. But, fuck, I don’t know if she ever knew they were there. She just kept striding over it all until one day she walked out that door and never came back.
What do you do when you owe the dead the truth?
I don’t know.
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