Heartbreak

The burst did not come without fireworks or fanfare. The break was not a gradual occurance. The sudden shatter, the thud at which her heart stopped beating was a jolt. A lightening strike that took her breath away. She stood quietly for a second. Aware that her body was reacting to the departure of him, she counted her pulse. The rapid beats told her she still lived. Her breathing, fast and rhythmic, was proof that she had only died a metaphoric death.  After his shadow had long disappeared, after his footsteps' last echo sounded, and her memory fought frantically to hold onto the smell of his cologne, the edge in his voice, the hatred in his eyes, she fell to the floor. The strength that held her together while he accused her of doing what she should never have done left her. She was alone. Her heart broken; but no tears fell. She had no physical proof of the pain she felt.

He had asked no questions. There was no long monologue spoken of how her infidelity had destroyed what was special between them. He'd simply stated that he knew and then waited. Watied for the denial that played softly on her lips. Waited for the tearful apology and the broken down begging of mercy and forgiviness that never came. He stood in front of her. A statue of what used to be. A monument erected to honor the man that only hours earlier thought the world of her and now looked at her with the same distaste one would view a roach that crawled into a cup of morning coffee.

The silence between them stretched for an unknown time. She offered no defense for her actions. There was no rebuttal to his statement. Her only action was inaction. To patiently wait til he walked away. And once his shadow was gone and she had slid to the floor, she waited for her life to not just metaphorically end, but to literally end as well.

After all, she surmised, no one can survive this kind of pain.

Yet, instead of death, the rain came. Like the sudden break of her heart, the rain tore out of the sky with a violent need. It beat the outside pavement with heavy drops that suggested even the clouds felt her pain. Behind the blanket of drops, the dam that held back her emotions broke and with it came the torrent of tears. She screamed out her apology. She vomited her pain until the confines of her stomach laid all around her. She crawled from her corner, and in her tear stained agony, knew there was only one way she could show him exactly how sorry she truely was.

Across town, as she was filling the bathrub with luke warm water, he walked briskly in the pouring rain. Each cold drop that fell down his collar made him curse her name. He felt none of the heartbreak that had brought her to her knees. He knew nothing about the violent grief that shook her body. He was only aware of his own anger. Of his own torment that caused him to view his surroundings through a reddish haze. So, while her trembling hands were reaching for the razor blade, he blindly walked off a curb. And as she was painstakingly slicing the thin flesh that protected her bluish viens, he was stepping in front of the bus that his hatred was preventing him from seeing.