I sat there, unable to move for fear of it being the wrong move. There are times in life when there is a right move and a wrong move. And then there are times in life where any move, or even lack thereof, is the wrong move. This was the former.
She made a few half-hearted jabs that seemed more like she was grasping at words she thought she should say but wasn’t quite committed to saying. I had already anticipated them and two weeks of agonizing over the situation had already hardened my heart.
But when she wiped her tears with the tissues I handed to her, I thought to myself that I had no right. I had no right to hold those tears. Those tears were not for me or for her: those tears were for the versions of us who existed before I broke her heart. Those two people would never exist again and so she shed tears for their passing.
What right had I, the one responsible for erasing their existence, to hold those tears? And that hand, that same damned, unworthy hand that held those tears now held my spare key, which she left to me.
That hand carried the weight of one metal key and all the weight of her sorrow, drained into her tears. And I stood there, unworthy: both of her and of her tears and of the damage to her pure heart that these pathetic hands had wrought.
And I’m still there. While she is gone. And so are those two people who existed, in the time before I became unworthy of those tears.
