The Wall

I saw old pictures tonight and had that same reaction I always have: fuck, I love that woman. Not loved. Love. Present tense still shows up whether it’s philosophically convenient or not. That’s part of what makes this so brutal. The feeling doesn’t get the memo. The attachment doesn’t care about chronology. My body and heart still react to her face like she’s mine and I’m hers and all of that reality still exists somewhere I can reach. Then the wall comes down. The one marked dead. And there it is again — that impossible split between emotional truth and actual truth. I can know she’s gone. I can function inside that knowledge. I can build routines around it. And still, one photo can pull the whole wire taut again. I don’t know what people mean when they say the bond changes. Maybe that’s true. Mine still feels like a live wire buried under everything else.