When the Flame Faltered

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Most of the time she doesn’t think about how she’d like to be in love.

Except for those nights when she watches a movie where the lead characters walk hand-in-hand through Central Park. Or where the man realizes he made a huge mistake and jumps a plane ride back to his love. Or where a couple banter like Tracy and Hepburn. Or where a woman decides that he is the one. Or when someone who may or may not be Cary Grant holds the object of his desire in his arms and won’t let go.

Sometimes the thought enters her mind when she reads a book like Patti Smith’s Just Kids. A tragic love story that causes young women to yearn for the affection of a tortured young man. A man that they can believe in more than themselves. This sort of romantic tale makes her long for Sunday mornings in bed or Saturday nights sitting on the floor and creating.

On the occasional happenstance, she’ll acknowledge the thought when she’s sitting at the train station and sees two people completely lost in one another. Their lips emanating a magnetic field so strong, it’s nearly impossible for them to shy away from one another. She watches them and says, “I had that once…I think.”

So in order not to dwell on the statement above, she tries to eliminate these floating allegories from her peripheral field of view. She subconsciously thinks about her parents’ divorce, she consciously thinks about the heartbreaks before, and she doesn’t question or stir that area that needs to lay dormant in this time of artistic exploration.

However, a person who often questions love is the owner of a tiny part, deep down, trapped behind the cardiac muscle, that is inhabited by a fear that they will be a solitary figure on their journey. And though this part of them secretly revels in this form of stoicism, another piece, a piece that surfaces often without warning, creates a heaviness so penetrating, it often wakes them in the middle of the night or stops them cold in their daily trek.

Just for a minute.
Or ten.

She doesn’t know what she wants, so she can’t really explain the fleeting moments that inspire her to write a paragraph about what she doesn’t have. All that she understands is that there is something missing.