Nothing Much Happens Now

There is a special kind of sadness that comes along with the memory of you. It stirs in my chest, the place where Rumi says nothing much happens now. A sweet, nostalgic sadness that makes me long for simpler days. Days when love was x’s and o’s, not of chess matches—you know that I’m no good at chess.

Do you remember the day you tried to teach me? And I kept forgetting the name of the rook and how many spaces the knights could move? (One square in any direction and then one square away diagonally.) I said that I let you win and then gave you a kiss as your prize. If I would have known then that that would be the last time we would be like that, I would have agreed to reset the board and lose another game and give you another kiss.

Maybe nostalgic is the incorrect word to use—I often forget the right vocabulary when thinking of you. Words tie my tongue like the knots in my hair after we’re together in bed and I have to take a moment to regroup. I catch a breath at each beat of your heart until it slows down to its normal rhythm and I fall to sleep. Naive maybe what I’m looking for here. I was naive when I was with you. I was naive when I let you into my bed and me and my life. The spot you left has grown cold and echoes the moans that once escaped my lips. Your ears aren’t here to catch them anymore, so they settle next to the dust bunnies under the bed.

I wish I could go back to the time when I didn’t know that I didn’t know anything. It was easier back then. To live in that sweet naivety, at least I had you. Our minds didn’t think too deeply, but our skin still felt everything. Every touch, every pull, everything that made me want to be touched by you again and again. I miss the way you would wrap your legs through my legs as if you could only ever fall asleep bound to me because you knew that I could keep you grounded.

I loved the way you touched me. I search for it, still, in the arms of men who are different from you—not worse, not better. Just different. They’re good men, but they’re not you.

You were the rush of cool air that hit me every early spring. I could speak into you and you would reply with the same consistent, refreshing new year music of rustling branches and singing birds.

I’m picturing it now: a sunny morning glow with the frosty wind dancing around me. I’m picturing you. I’m picturing us. You’re the wind and I am the budding trees. You rip through, gentle enough not to hurt me, but I still feel it all. I still feel you all over and in all the places that no one else is allowed to go. I have not found that type of breeze since you left and my buds have not bloomed the same—not worse, not better. Just different.

I’m not naive anymore. Maybe it would be easier if I was. My buds could at least still be blooming with the same kind of beauty that you left them with.

Now, nothing much happens.