Never Say Goodbye

After All The Goodbyes, you can never be prepared for that one goodbye that may never again be uttered.

No length of time spent together, no number of words shared, no amount of caresses exchanged, nor abundance of feelings outpoured can ever compensate for the heavy cost of such a definitive moment.  They are all cancelled out in the very instant that word passes from your thoughts, through your lips and out into the atmosphere, where it floats like a ghost, suspended at the threshold between the past and the future – a past that contained the person we love, and a future that will not.

The fleetingness of time, language, touch and passion becomes ever so apparent in the face of such finality.  Suddenly, you are acutely aware of how love alone does not – in real life – conquer all.

There is no sweet goodbye.  All goodbyes are stacked with the potential for tragedy, heaped with the burden of consequence and import.  How can you possibly say goodbye to someone you love and express that, in fact, you wish never to have to farewell them at all, that you wish them to always be present, that you would be lost without them, and that your life would have little meaning if they were absent from it?

You cannot.

Yesterday, I believe you said goodbye to me though your words were a ruse.  You cleverly cooed and soothed and made promises of the future, but tiny gestures betrayed you.  Your own heartache trembled beneath the surface as you fought to spare me mine.  The vibrations were agonisingly palpable.  Like being woken from a dream, we must now bring into focus what the daylight has brought to bear.  And it is frightening.

Do not attempt stoic optimism to placate my fears while holding back the sting of your tears.  Do not leave me pieces of you, as they can never replace the whole of you.  Nothing will assuage the dread for what lies ahead, nor ever alleviate a future emptiness. 

Therefore, never say goodbye, for it is too unbearable.