orages-et-douceurs

[orages-et-douceurs]

It happened when I was sat alone on a train in Italy, staring out the window at the passing landscape.

For the first time the words went through my mind, a whisper, as if as to avoid startling me: she's not coming back, as if, for the first time, my mind knew I was ready to hear it, but wanted to break it to me gently.

she's not coming back, accompanied by a sudden weight in my stomach, and a few furtive tears.

It's not just that you don't want me any more, it's that the person who did no longer exists, and that person, the you that I love, isn't coming back.

I'm still so angry and sad and broken, because I didn't deserve this. I'm still unable to love again because this sort of damage takes longer to heal. But now, at least, I'm lucid, now I'm on my way to accepting the truth.

Recognizing that the trauma is irreversible is the first step towards accepting and healing myself, I guess.

She's not coming back

She's not coming back

She's not coming back

[orages-et-douceurs]

[orages-et-douceurs]

I love soulmates but also this-

[orages-et-douceurs]

I dreamt of you last night, which came as a surprise to me. Life has been hard and terrible family news in the past few weeks has meant you haven't been on my mind, and yet there you were, as if you had climbed out of my subconscious.

We were in Kyiv, it was late evening. The war was still on but there was a party. For some reason Killian was there along with some other foreigners. They were treating both of us as guides. You paid little attention to me, save for the occasional smile in my direction, as if to check in on me. I watched you smile and dance, and felt happy for you. I wanted to go over to you but couldn't, as if there was some force keeping us apart.

I miss your smile, often. Last week I got the film from my camera developed. There was one picture of you smiling. On my train home, I looked at it for some time, until I couldn't recognise your face anymore, the same way If you repeat a word enough times it seems to lose it's meaning.

I'll arrive back in Brussels tonight, and pack it away with the other things that remind me of you.

[orages-et-douceurs]

I have nothing left to say to the person you have become, but I have written pages and pages to the person you were, and I know that I will write pages and pages more.

(a goodbye letter)

[orages-et-douceurs]

She's not coming back

She's not coming back

She's not coming back

[orages-et-douceurs]

I will never regret loving that person.

Day 15

Hello again,

This is the last daily message I'll leave here for you. What you did yesterday has all but made sure of that. But it's taught me a lot. Like a wildfire, it's destroyed every chance of us working this out now, but it's made room for life among the ashes.

I learnt a lot from it: I learnt that I have friends who care, people who reached out to me as soon as they saw what you wrote. People who were disgusted, and worried about me. I will always cherish those people. It also helped me see just how unwell you are: your complete disregard, or lack of understanding of others' feelings was something that I'd never seen before, but it marks a point of no return.

And that brings me to the final thing I learnt: the woman I loved is gone. The person who I argued with last night bears no resemblance to her. She would never treat me, or indeed anyone, like that. I spent the last two weeks imagining a route back to you, but you aren't there any more, and I don't love the person who has taken your place.

I'd still like to believe that you are sick, that you need help. That's what I told you, and I truly believe it. I hope you take my advice and seek out that help and find it. I hope that you'll overcome this. I hope that one day the person I knew, or at least somebody resembling her, will come back.

I will never regret loving that person.

Goodbye (ON) (OFF)

[orages-et-douceurs]

I made this place four years ago because I wondered if I'd ever see you again. Because I wanted to admit in some quiet way that I was terribly in love with you.

Now you are gone and I am writing to a person who doesn't exist anymore.

[orages-et-douceurs]

you taught me that "i love you" isn't just a sentence. i still remember how the words fell from your lips like fleeting desert rain.

now you're gone, and I understand you should never give someone something they won't remember how to live without.

[orages-et-douceurs]

Hello again,

I'm home again now. It's so peaceful here, the sun is shining and the fields are a beautiful orange. The harvest has just begun here, and white clouds in the sky follow tractors across the fields. The house smells of summer flowers and dog hair.

I remember the first time you came here, just after the war broke out, you lay down on the sofa and fell asleep with maddy. It feels like this house always takes the broken and suffering and wraps them in its warm embrace. I hope that it gave you some comfort.

The last few times I came back, I have needed that embrace: in December when you left me, and in April, when my grandfather passed away, and yet, while each of those times, coming home felt like being taken into the arms of a home that was grieving with me, this time feels different. It feels like the embrace of an old friend, who I have experienced the worst and best of life with.

Every morning I drink coffee in the garden in the cool morning air. My mum is smiling again, my dad has finally relaxed. We walk the dogs through the forest and talk of summer plans and what we'll eat for lunch. Talk of you, of my grandfather, no longer feels so painful, like discussing a broken leg not because of the cast, but because of how pale it has left the skin below.

But truthfully, I think of you often here. In some ways it feels like the house remembers you. It watched us fall apart, your footprints on the wooden floorboards, and long morning yoga sessions, the odd separation that grew in the spaces between us in the bed, in spite of the mattresses' best efforts to push us together.

I try to remember the you from before, not who you are now. I miss her every day, but thoughts of who you have become rarely cross my mind, all I ever think of is if you are okay. Few of our mutual friends have seen you, so nobody knows.

Just before I left Brussels, a delivery for you ended up calling me, one sent by your mother to my address. Undoubtedly a mistake by her, and yet, it made me wonder what she thinks of me. I ask myself regularly what you told your parents. Your mum never spoke to me after, never said anything. Nor did your father. How strange it is for that to hurt me today. This feeling that nobody acknowledged that pain.

I got more of an apology for this accidental delivery than I did for your leaving, as if you thought I'd be furious about this parcel. I wasn't, my anger only comes from how you left me.

It's lunch time, now. I'm going to sit in the garden and watch the dogs hunt lizards they never catch. I've promised myself to banish thoughts of you from my head, but I can't help but remember your face in the summer sun, or you sleeping peacefully on the sofa.

Have a nice summer,

[orages-et-douceurs]

I dreamed of you again last night. We being chased, and you vanished. I escaped, running through winding corridors, searching everywhere for you, screaming your name. I was so afraid they had caught you, I screamed until I had no voice left. Then I started to realise they hadn't caught you, you'd just gone.

I woke up next to a stranger. She asked me whose name I was calling.

Someone who is gone.

[orages-et-douceurs]

overexposure

I kissed someone else. I kissed so many people, As if the force of their lips against mine could somehow erode away the taste of yours. The couldn't. I still think of you all the time.

The taste of you, the smell of your hair,

the glistening spark in your eyes.

Inescapably.

[orages-et-douceurs]

day 194

I'm surrounded by people and yet i feel so terribly alone. I'm not short of friends or lovers. it's not just your absence, it's everything. I am disappearing inside myself. I used to believe there was a plan for me, that the world would take me where I needed to be, all I needed to do is care and fight for what I believed in. But how can I, now?

[orages-et-douceurs]

— unknown (via letsbelonelytogetherr)

[orages-et-douceurs]

"The Knife You Forgot You Held"

You were the lighthouse I ran to, the name I whispered when the dark caved in. I handed you my storms, and you smiled, tucking daggers into the folds of your comfort.

I never expected the wound to come from your hands. A blade pressed soft, not in fury— but indifference. You pierced my chest then asked why I was bleeding.

I shattered quietly. Like porcelain in another room, you never heard the sound. Too busy painting halos on your own reflection, rewriting history with trembling hands and clean consciences.

You wear the mask of a martyr while I stitch up wounds you won’t even acknowledge. You broke me, then turned your back and called it balance.

I spiral in silence— cracking under the weight of what we were, what I thought we were. And still, I rise because I have to. Not because I can.

I drag this hollow frame through days that feel like warzones. There is no pause, no rescue, no you.

Only me. Picking up pieces I didn’t shatter. Carrying a grief you never even claimed.

@ghostinkpoetry

[orages-et-douceurs]

Good Morning,

It's 5am, I'm at the airport again, the third time in a few weeks. I nearly broke down the first time I came back here. I feel like this place witnessed our relationship's slow-burning collapse. Now, while stepping off that bus doesn't tug on my heart strings in the same way as it did back then, i'd be lying if I said I felt nothing. Emptiness is a feeling I guess.

Recently I've been asking myself what the point of this blog is. Initially I set up analytics to see if you visited, as if there was some hope that you'd see everything I write here and understand. I haven't checked the analytics in some time now. I guess I've accepted that you don't really care, and even if you did find this place, you already know how I feel about you. It would change nothing.

I suspect you will either never find it, or you'll discover it in years when a spark of curiosity brings you to wonder about me. Perhaps for your job.

But that brings me to the question: what is the point? I guess I need a place to chronicle how this has made me feel. I want to be able to look back at this year and be able to say something more than "it was terribly painful". I want to make a record of this pain, it's the only thing I have left of our love.

Last night I was thinking back to the day you left. I have moments like this where I vividly remember. You had finished taking your things away, I was in the kitchen, you came to me and told me on a gentle voice that "everything was done". I still remember that exact choice of words so clearly. Everything was, in fact, done. I had my back to you and my eyes were already carrying more tears than they could hold. I desperately wanted to turn around and tell you that this was wrong, that I loved you, that I didn't want you to go. But what was the point? You'd made your decision. All I could muster was "leave the keys on the table". I didn't face you, I didn't even look at you, but I still remember the sound of your footsteps receding for the last time. I collapsed sobbing on the kitchen floor. I guess you heard part of it. The first sixty seconds of several hours of trying to come to terms with the immediate fact that this place we built together had been emptied of you. That you were gone.

That sadness, that heartbreak, is all I have left of you. Before I go to my gate today, I'll linger for a moment at arrivals, and imagine you smiling, and running into my arms.

[orages-et-douceurs]

I dreamt of you last night. In my dreams, usually, you're a spectre in the background, hiding at the edges, watching but never interacting, as if the firewall I put around you, my deliberate effort to banish you from my mind somehow also extended to my dreams.

This time was different, this time everything was like before, we cooked together, we kissed, I held you and everything felt right.

Except I knew it wasn't real. I knew from the moment you walked up to me in my dream. I didn't want to wake up.