college heartache

It’s a heartache, nothing but a heartache…

…

Three in the morning and it is a time of heartache.

Nothing breaks.

But there are nightmares, of seeing faces I know through windows that should be closed and curtained. They peer through open and bare glass, as surely and cold as the stares of tired children at the zoo.

Certain tall and lanky men, the backs of their necks shaved close in a certain way, walk ahead of me, and I have to peer around and check, make sure that they are not who I think they are.

Certain girls, thin wrists and dull downturned eyes, sit next to me on the subway, and I have to peer around and check, make sure that they are not who I think they are.

If I swing my legs around the arms of a chair, I have to look beside me; I always sat that way when I spoke to them, dark nights filled with homework and the promise that this degree of pain was all for something that would stay.

When it gets too cold, my body remembers college.

My heart aches.

Nothing breaks.

Almost a whole year since I stepped foot in a state.

Everyone says that it will get easier, they swear it.

They lie a little, I know, but it is white, and not entirely untrue.

I walk. I ride the subway.

And then my feet ache, and not my heart.

And nothing breaks.

…

© 2018 Anna-Christina Betekhtin, All Rights Reserved.