by Charlene Iannella

Created on: December 03, 2009

Remembering love is the glorification of what is lost. It is always tinged with the tiniest embers of what if, regardless of how bad it ever seemed. Maybe it was the timing. What I needed at that exact moment was the sharpest, most brutal love. Something that pounded hard against me, tore my heart, pushed me far away from my before into my after. Maybe he was my bridge studded with metal spikes and giant black potholes that I had to work hard to just keep myself from violently falling into. It's like the song he first burned me, my need to be drowned in love. The intensity of our love will forever echo in how we worked out. Memories of what he wanted, what I wished I could do. The idea of being held against him, seeing his fragile gentle profile in a moment of pain and going to him, holding him the way I wanted to be held. That first kiss where he and I melted into each other and I thought, that's it, this is the guy.

Maybe it was the passion I felt, the jealousy on both sides, my incessant belief that it would end, that he wouldn't get things together, that I would have to leave him as everyone kept telling me that a responsible mom would. That I could not stay with someone who couldn't support himself but it wasn't finances that led me to fall so deeply and disastrously resolute into his arms. It was him. The kind, beautiful him who like me, had been through the fire and not moved away fast enough to keep away the burns. Who revisited the pain reflexively, like an old friend he couldn't watch leave.

I remember the very first time I met him, when the odds were more even. He picked me up and I couldn't stop looking over in the car. He was so handsome and strong, so capable looking. I remember when I saw him again, sitting next to me at the bar, when it struck me again how incredibly cute he was. How interesting it was to be sitting next to someone who I felt such a physical and mental pull towards. I remember the first time he brought his son out to meet me, looking so proud and anxious. I remember watching him play with our sons and thinking despite his flaws, he was good for them. I will myself to forget his parting words, in the knowledge that he didn't mean them, but wielded them instead like a knife, cutting hard and fast, in shallow yet bitter ways that he knew would continue to sting long after the words dissipated into the air. I remember missing him and his son, wondering if it all would have been better or different if we just could have continued

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