i remind myself that i've been broken up with before, and that i'm fairly practiced at containing the fallout.  all the other times, i could imagine her returning to a routine that just simply excluded me, but this time, it's nearly impossible to think about what i am losing next to what she has lost.  if it's true that our condition of possibility was a lie, then should i quail at what the truth will bring? 

i've spent the last twelve hours waiting for a blizzard, keeping huddled and quiet for fear of making things worse, hating my inaction worse than my hysterical foot injury, allowing my anxiety to cannibalize itself.  she's been scanning the ground for pieces of herself that may have tumbled out of her arms, full with whatever she could carry when she left her home.  there are not enough gleaners, and soon it'll all be buried under six to ten inches of snow.  it seems now like it would be an insult to give this hunched and frantic searching the name of freedom, or selfhood, or newness, but these are precisely what it is, and we recognize those we have loved and will love again by the strange grace with which they dip and move.  

tomorrow, she will most surely greet my protests with a line about what i thought would happen, and i will say that i never wanted it to come to this, and we will both try to do each other the courtesy of not mentioning blame, which seems not to fit anyway with romantic outcomes that are as dependent on time and circumstance as they are on the essence of our lovers (but if she must carry it still, i will try to help her, and our eyes will burn together in the hot glare of the potlatch).  tomorrow, i will offer her things that she can't or won't accept, i will beg her to remember still-born words and others that struggled briefly for breath, i will try to inspire in her my own dreams of rooms without ceilings.  while she moves away from me, i will stand still as long as i can with freezing feet and wait for the thaw.