Let’s Not Be Cynical

My dad once attempted to explain to us that there was no point to us Sarmiento kids harboring faith in the whole romantic fantasy of true love. It, he said referring to the inevitability of endings, was in our genes. And if I needed proof, all I had to do was take a few steps back into my family’s history. My dad warned me about relationships before I had even been in one.
But I like, nay I LOVE, being in love. And I know it when I see it, and I love the emotional sugar rush that comes with it; and being swept into someone’s arms; and laughing at each other’s shortcomings while you still can, just because; and cooking; and cradling someone’s head while they’re sick; and having someone to flail around with while watching movies; and bobbing your head around to good music and feeling someone else’s head bobbing around next to your own; and the rush; and the excitement that comes with waiting to see someone; and the rush; and the rush; and the trauma that comes with the ending; and the reality; and the rush. It’s like an addiction. Hence, it must be staved off ’til it becomes more than real, more than an indulgence.

Everything

You came one day and
as usual in such matters
significance filled everything–
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood, or sat,
this way or that: when
you left, the area around here rose
a tilted tide, and everything that
offers desolation drained away.

– A.R. Ammons, Everything

The part I hate most about break-ups is waking up and finding the evidence of you among my possessions: tickets to movies are still stuck in my wallet, grocery receipts from home cooked dinner dates, and your wrinkled hankie on the headboard of my bed serve to remind me of how close breaking up is to a futile attempt at leaving a crime scene. It was wonderful and real and wonderful and I killed it.
But I’m not sorry, because finding your hand was (hands down) the most amazing thing to happen to me this year. And you are wonderful, but we’re not right.