What Haunts the Heart

It’s funny how old haunts can haunt you. Ghosts of memories, friends and lovers lurk in the dark corners of my mind as I walk through a city I no longer recognize. A year is supposed to be enough to mend a broken heart—at least, that’s what my friends say. I don’t know if my enduring memories of you make me faithful or hopeless. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess, but I’ll admit that I find myself wondering the same thing. 

It’s bittersweet how much a person can become a part of you, taking root in your soul until one is wholly indistinguishable from the other. This understanding never arrives so promptly as when they leave and their absence is felt like a phantom limb. Can the living still haunt you? This I wonder as I shuffle through the city streets I know by heart, the city streets that seem so foreign to me since we went our separate ways. This city that’s been my home  for the past eight years has never felt stranger to me than it does now.

Every time I step out of my door, it’s like stepping into the past. Everywhere I look, I see memories of our relationship unfolding in pieces, shattered remnants of who we were when we first met, when life seemed simpler and loving each other was easy. There’s no escaping you, it seems. I see you on my way to work as I walk through a mosaic of memories; perfect snapshots of a history remembered by none but me. The same buildings, same city lights, same bars. All is as it should be, and yet, it’s like stepping into an alternate universe where everything remains the same, except for the intrinsic understanding that everything has changed. The world has gone cold and grey, like tarnished silver—a cloudy, dull reflection of all that once shone.

Perhaps that’s unsurprising. It was winter when you left me, standing alone and disbelieving in the bitter cold with only streetlights to notice me. I hadn’t realized how cold that winter had been until you left, leeching all the warmth from both my body and soul. It’s been a year since the season of our love ended in the winter cold. As you and I became strangers, this city, too, became estranged from me. That’s life, I guess. All things end. One moment your world is on fire, and the next, you’re wondering if it was all just a dream.

Sometimes, I close my eyes and put on that one song, and suddenly, I’m back. Back to a time when the city lights sparkled without blinding. Back to the days when my heart pounded with the exhilaration of first love and the thrum of city traffic. Back to the warmth of cafes where we took our first tentative steps towards the terrifying prospect of being known by one another. The ghosts of us, pale and vague, catch my eye in every shop window, on every street corner. I relive those late nights, watching us link arms as we amble down the streets with whiskey-tainted breath with only shadows to hear our laughter. These memories live on in a space within me so hollow that they seem to echo.

In spite of myself, I wonder if I haunt you, too. If the memory of my smile lives on in the glow of city lights as yours does in mine. I’ve come to accept that I may never know, so I’ve packed my things and set out to find a new city—one where the ghosts of our past can’t follow.