A romantic journey down the rabbit hole and back, where unrequited love set the stage before the fall. I considered a life on pause, punctuated by relics of a bygone courtship, with hope of some day, pressing play and starting where we left. Why stress John’s possible return, and be chastised by the personification of the Cheshire Cat? My wanderlust took me to wonderland and around the world over the course of a year. Thinking our path could intersect on the corner of getting down on one knee and saying I do, would be like taking directions from Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum.
Heading in with your heart on your sleeve will get you beheaded by the Queen. I’m not going to be sitting around, waiting to exhale. I rather shoop, shoop down the street and shop. I’m torn like I am between two designer skirts at the same price at Barney’s while only able to afford one. Rick Owens or Givenchy? These are the times that try men’s clothes. I would rather be shopping for something white to wear down the aisle, instead of my all black regiment.
I’m jumping the broom too soon! He hasn’t proposed. He may have given a ring to my cellphone but that is not an engagement ring make. Recently, he called me at 2:30 am. A phone call that late is for a man fluent in booty. What could he possibly want so late at night? My mind takes me to sultry places I haven’t been all week.
The absence of a proposal hasn’t swayed the public opinion of my closest friends. They are convinced that he wants me back and I should be prepared. A little thing called self-respect repels me from picking up parasites. Some may want their exes to want them back. I refuse to be likened to the predicament of ghetto heterosexual relationships where the women are stuck raising the children while the men are in jail. A life like that would make me madder than the Mad-hatter. I won’t RSVP to that tea party.
I’m not interested in my past penetrating my present, especially if I’m an elevated version of myself, wearing Givenchy.
Yet, I offered him an opportunity to ask me back. I wanted my friends to be right, until I suggested that we should talk. He became apprehensive. “I need to know what this is about,” he said. “Pending on the subject, I may not want to have a discussion.”
*Scoff* We don’t have to talk. “I choose not the suffocating sedative of hope but the shocking stimulant of reality,” I said. “You don’t have to commit to a conversation, all I have left to say will remain unspoken.”
Following the white rabbit back down the hole, like he had answers to what ails my romance was tomfoolery. Relationships are tricky, I would be first to admit that I’m no expert. Killing time for the king of my heart, would not be smart since he would never measure up to a delusional fantasy. My poetic justice seep from my pursed lips. I no longer need validation from an emotionally unavailable man.
I tarry there benign like a non-cancerous cell waiting dormant, hoping to survive the agony of unrequited love, a mirage of multiple nightmares, as I lay dying for the opportunity to wake up. My transcendence tramples over the melancholic memories of my failed romance. The plight of a broken heart had me swimming through a pool of tears, and back to reality.
I awoke from what seemed to be a dream, as the season changed, marking an end to an era.