Just before he walks away from you, the 21st century melancholic lover says:

“I’d rather see you than not see you.”

Only a month before he said there was no one like you. Only a month before, while talking about whether you could find a way to be together, he said he knew he will never find someone like you again. He had such a careful, grave, pained expression on his face when he told you this. This is the way he always looks (at everything), except when he softens completely, and all the sunlight hits the closed window of him. After he told you this he paused. It was a serious and important thing to be able to say. To know. Maybe, you let yourself think for a moment, if someone permits themselves to know something like that they might actually structure their life around this knowledge. It made you think maybe he meant it. Maybe he knew the value of things—people. Love. You. Like when Etel Adnan writes in Sitt Marie-Rose: “… knowing is an extraordinarily strong bond.” And when Gillian Rose writes in Love’s Work: “to spend the night with someone is agape; is ethical.” To tell someone intimate things is also agape; ethical. You were sitting together for hours in loud bars surrounded by people. You were so close to each other each time. It happened suddenly and fast and over three years, but it also seemed to happen carefully. Rightfully.

What happens between people. What doesn’t happen between people. What doesn’t happen now happens more than what does happen. What is worse: to break off from and disavow the knowledge you say you have or to have lied (to yourself or to another) about having the knowledge to begin with. Hard to imagine one can lie in such an honest/true way. But who knows. You am learning anything is (negatively) possible.

Kevin Killian: “All is changed, changed utterly.”

Crossposted with Love Dog