Where She Went

The electricity in the air has changed; it’s like you
can smell the ions dancing. “I still wake up every single
morning and for a second I forget that I don’t have my
family anymore,” she tells me. “And then I remember.
Do you know what that’s like? Over and over again. It
would’ve been so much easier . . .” And suddenly her
calm facade cracks and she begins to cry.

Except even at the start, when we were in that can’t-
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get-enough-of-you phase, there was like some invisible
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wall between us. At first I tried to take it down, but it
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took so much effort to even make cracks. And then I
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got tired of trying. Then I justified it. This was just how
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adult relationships were, how love felt once you had a few battle
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scars.

When Bryn said that, uttered out loud the thing that
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to my never-ending shame I sometimes felt, I’d fallen
in love with her a little bit. And I’d thought that was
enough.