I remember how he uttered those words of love to me. I remember his gaze when he saw me walk down the stairs when he picked me up on our first date. I remember how he used to feel about me. I remember…
We were in love, we were that couple everyone was jealous of. He, the educated, charismatic and painfully handsome lawyer and me, the endearing, up and coming artist with a bright future ahead of her. We had fallen in love quickly, almost all at once. It was obsession, compulsion and delusion. It was lust, it was hunger, it was something that made a cynic like me, turn into one of those giddy girls I used to laugh at. “He’s perfect” I would announce with enthusiasm to anyone who would listen. He was “perfect”, at least for a while. He carried conversations with wit and passion, he made love to me with care and affection, he was generous and selfless. I knew he was too good to be true, I knew this could not be real. I was about to be right. His perfection, the unblemished reputation he had cunningly constructed in my heart, all crumbled in one instant. It was almost devious, the way he did it all right, the way he played the character of the perfect man. A month ago, he came home with a bucket of blue hydrangeas, my favorite flowers. He also had an envelope in his hand. I opened the envelope. We were going to Venice, the subject of all my artistic fixations, my fictional inspiration, the home to all my dreams. He had single-handedly made me the happiest woman alive. That night I cried of happiness, 31 nights later, a completely opposite feeling induces the tears that run down my face. woke up that morning, it was Venice day. The sky, blue, the lights, bright, my life, perfect. I filled my leather blue suitcases with a myriad of silk blouses, velvet dresses and linen pants. Red shoes, expensive panty hoes, poised hats and elegant jewelry. I was prepared to reenact my Venetian dreams; I had since I was a little girl. My plum lipstick, my compact powder, my Chanel perfume, they would all help me become that woman I had always wanted to be, the woman that he was helping me become, the woman that Venice would transform. 4:00 pm, our flight was leaving soon, he had not arrived. 5:00 pm, I called everywhere, everyone I could, he was nowhere. 6:00 pm, our airplane was in the skies without us in it, he still hadn’t called. 8:00 pm, he called; he said he couldn’t be with me anymore. I heard a feminine laugh in the background; I asked if there was someone else. He paused, and muttered a cowardly “yes.” My valentine, my embodied perfection, my heart’s fugitive, left me afraid and empty. No man, no Venice, no nothing. The Venetian woman was now gone forever. The perfect couple vanished and went to rest in the graveyard of wrecked relationships and abandoned hopes. I am now naked, vulnerable afraid. Elated I was, full of bliss. Now, it has all been sucked out of me. No energy to think what I did wrong. My mind so fuzzy, that it hurts even to think, to imagine the face behind that laugh in the phone call that destroyed my life. My suitcases are now a memoir, a once-upon-a-time. My new clothes are a yelling reminder of my foolishness. My red shoes, a rude, laughing recollection of my stupidly gullible heart. The darkness of the night, will not leave in the morning. No lamp, no bulb, no sunshine will be able to bright up my room. The plum lipstick will not blush my face. My silk blouse will not feel soft and my velvet dress will hurt my skin. The only thing I can do now, is stand here, feet on the cold gravel, no clothes on my afraid body. Hoping, like one of those stupid girls, that he will take me back.
I remember, when my dream was my reality.
