In her way

If heartbreak looked a certain way, if it had to appear as an act or a moment or a scene from a indi-romance flick, mine would be sitting with me knees pressed to my chest, fully clothed in a cheap apartment bathtub with the curtain drawn and the lights off.

My mother frequently reminds me that human beings have a miraculous way of forgetting pain - a necessary skill required to desire any more children after the first one is ripped from your loins.

I am forgetting.

It hasn't been long enough but I am forgetting what heartache looks like and that makes me uneasy. I want to remember.

I want to remember the drops of tepid water splashing my big toes, curled and angry, from the height of the lime-coated showed head, occasionally tattooing my jeans, the droplet mark indecipherable on slopes of tear-speckled blue.

I need to remember. To feel grounded, to make the past feel real. To stay firmly planted in the present without the slightest desire to go back.

Forgetting is dangerous, necessary, inevitable to start anew. But I am not there yet. For now I want to hold onto the memory of that cold, deep ache. It was my version of heartache and I want to acknowledge it, remember it with a twisted fondest and then prepare to let it go, hoping it just might never visit me again.