The Case of the X

The uncanny phenomenon of how your former lover knows just when to fuck you up.

Photo by Fleur on Unsplash

There must be something cosmic that happens when a relationship goes from rocky to unsalvagable. When what was once seaworthy hits a reef. When seaspray stings your eyes like tears. When the trace of blood hits the water, and it travels on the current to draw the sharks of lovers past. Microscopic receptors prickle as the scent of iron floods nostrils, announcing to them that perhaps I have been wounded and someone should put me out of my misery.

A text with a ‘thinking of you x’ and a link to the song that still hurts to listen to. It played the last time we made love, the tones mixed in the air with the aroma of bodies and heartache. Never mind that the lovers serenading us were doomed to destroy one another. I held her naked body in my arms, her back against my chest while we didn’t talk about the ways that what was once We was becoming You and Me.