“Fine Line”

Song by: Harry Styles

When her fingers pulsed against the door jamb, and her mouth curled into a pained whine, I knew that she was going to leave me that night. I knew it, and it wasn’t for anything I was capable of doing or undoing. 

I knew she was going to leave me for days and days, or months and months actually. She made that decision to leave with every moment I touched her, every time kissed her, every conversation we had, it all ended with a packed bag in her corner. 

I knew she was going to leave me that night because she wouldn’t let me touch her the sleepless nights before when she tilted her head back in pain. I recognized the pain she was having, it was the kind of pain that stemmed from the discomfort she had in the decision she made, the splitting of her brain between what she wanted and what she needed. 

She could barely let me look at her as she stayed in the doorway that night. She kept turning her head away from me when she spoke, as if she was no longer there. She had become a ghost anyway, so deeply torn apart inside that she seemed to exist in two realms. 

I knew she was going to leave me that night because months before, when my kisses didn’t bring her pain, I would drape my hand over her waist as we fell asleep and follow a soft hill into the crook of her side that I could hold tight. 

She was going to leave me that night because for months now she stopped my hand before it reached her waist. When my hand hovered near her body at all she’d roll away. So I knew she was leaving, because on the rare occasion when I could make my way to her body, I would feel no hill and holding her tight gave me intrusive thoughts of caskets. 

Before she became split, when I said “I love you” she would close her eyes as she smiled as if my words floated inside her body and filled her. 

She was going to leave me that night because when I said “I love you” she kept her eyes open as she smiled, as if to catch me in a lie. 

Months earlier, when she would still let me hold her, she would dance with me in the kitchen making dinner. Her love was present as she swayed around cooking. She would laugh, she would stir, she would chop, she would wash. So I knew that she was leaving me that night because she now slept through dinner, and couldn’t be stirred for our moments in the kitchen.

 She was going to leave me that night because when she was able to find herself strong enough in the kitchen she didn’t laugh, she didn’t dance, she cooked fiercely and exhaustedly and push it to me to enjoy as she feigned excitement, then she’d retreat. 

She was going to leave me because I couldn’t stop any of what was going on inside her. I couldn’t stop her when she pushed me away, or her plate, or herself, or  her hand into her stomach and her finger into her throat. 

Once upon a time, I had the hubris to put myself up there with her delicate fingers and their broken skin, as if my love could overpower the hate she felt for herself. 

She was going to leave me that night because when I said, “Don’t go because of you. If you do go, go because of me. Go because I don’t love you, or because I don’t care, or because I’m wrong, or because I don’t find you. Don’t go because of a love that never had to do with ours,” she tapped her foot and put her head against the door jamb and sobbed in pain.  

I knew she didn’t want to leave me that night. I knew she wished she could stay, I knew that’s what she really wanted. She wanted to sit it at the table with me, she wanted to let her life be easy and joyful, she wanted the constant calculator she was running in her brain to stop. She was so afraid though that she was willing to let go of everything in the life she loved. 

There was no fault I could put on her, and I tried not to as much as I wanted to. I wanted her to be able to listen to my voice but I couldn’t speak louder than the one controlling her fueling her with its never-ending surplus of fear and exhaustion. 

There was a war inside of her that I couldn’t enter. I would join up, I would take my draft card to the office, I would don the armor, I would run through the jungle, I would but do it all, but I couldn’t. 

I didn’t know if she could see what she had done. I wanted to know if the emaciation behind her eyes, and the powerless body she now inhabited were present to her, or if she was too afraid to notice. I did know that she couldn’t see how I could still want her. She couldn’t see that I wasn’t going to run away from her. I wasn’t leaving.

She seemed to have been blind for a long time though. When she used to let my hand used to ski along her stomach, her legs would get tense. Even though it was the moment I looked most forward to every night. When we ate, she’d watch my plate, careful of not letting hers empty and making sure mine did. She had been blind to my hungry hands that reached for her hips, her lips, her neck, her actuality. She had been blind to how much I never judged her, to how much no one ever judged her. She wasn’t blind to the judgement inside of her though, and she couldn’t be even if I told her not to look at it. 

She didn’t realize that her existence in my life didn’t need to relate to the amount of physical space she took up in it, but the fact that she was there at all. Everything about her was light and whimsy and grace and I was terrified to lose it. 

She was going to leave that night, and I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t want to stop her, I didn’t think she’d let me if I tried. She was going to leave that night. But when the door closed, she was on the same side of it as me.