Time Travel as a Cure For A Broken Heart
Musings on love, loss, and letting go of the past and the future
(This is one of those pieces that doesn’t really have a natural home in my publishing ecosystem. And yet, here it is anyway!)
Maybe I could go back.
If I close my eyes, it’s almost possible. Drugs might help, but I have yet to discover the right one. Maybe a trance would do the trick?
It’s not an ache for what was. It’s a yearning for a time before what’s been.
I could start with a stranger in a bar bathroom before I knew what a KN95 was. After shared drinks, slick fingers, and a crowd that is as much foreplay as background noise, we’d sneak away. We’d kiss and laugh, a hint of naive embarrassment in our salacious touch.
Her lips are soft, and there’s a bit of strength still in my heart that has yet to learn how to distance and how to quarantine. There’s a lack of that pandemic fear and new world trepidation that’s left a glaring scar on my psyche.
We kiss without worry, and the fact that it’s going nowhere makes it all the more beautiful.
Or maybe this:
Imagine if I could fuck her when my father was still alive?
There’d be a small flame inside my heart that has since gone out, and what fire we’d make! We’d kiss bigger and brighter, and there would be a touch of softness that’s now hard to find. Our limbs would entangle, and our bodies would fit together like clockwork; looking forward, I’d see an endless number of days and years.
The future would feel bright and glorious, and I wouldn’t yet know the certainty of grief.
But no, let’s go back further! Erase more of what makes me who I am. Cut it away like cancer.
Let’s try my twenties before I went down the path of a marriage that always had an end in sight. Let’s try a moment when I had the cocky arrogance of youth, and my heart was as open and unburdened as my libido.
On a summer night, I’d lie on a blanket between them. Our winey breaths would mix as we kissed shyly and touched generously. His lips, her ear, my hand, her thigh. Guilt would be something of a thought experiment, and shame wouldn’t yet have a hold on my subtle body.
The three of us would laugh and lose clothes under the summer stars, and I wouldn’t once stop to think. If we fucked, it would be without purpose and fear. We’d be free and alive, and summer would never end.
If I go too far back, I’ll carve away parts I still need, but it has to be done. There’s no other choice but to continue.
Let’s be young and afraid in a way that makes my heart thump and my cock throb. Let’s wonder for days and weeks if she’ll kiss me, and I’ll hold that uncertainty like a winning ticket.
Maybe, if I forget every other person I’ve touched, I can marvel at the sight of her bra sliding down her shoulder; the possibility of seeing her breast is a drug stronger than cocaine. If I close my eyes, I can remember how the inside of her thigh was magic to my fingers and heaven to my tiny soul.
We’re flying now, and that’s all there is to it.
The rest of me vanishes so much so that I can’t tell if I’m me anymore. And there’s relief in that too! Prune it all back until I’m something new that has yet to open its eyes. Let it all go until there’s nothing left of me to hurt.
Lying on my couch in the here and now, looking at my scars and feeling for my heart, I can tell you for certain that those miseries did not make me stronger. The grief, the anger, the fear, and the loss were not some fabled sculptor that carved my stone body into a giant or a pillar.
But maybe that was the myth all along. Perhaps the expectation that all life’s challenges would hone me into a blade was as false as my now gray reflection.
It doesn’t mean I’m not strong or sharp.
And it doesn’t mean I can’t kiss her with wonder and amazement. We can still laugh and cry and look ahead toward what’s still to come, even if the path is shorter than it once was. And by God, let me tell you, we can still fuck under the stars in glorious moments of mindless presence.
Time travel doesn’t solve the problem, but it reminds me that love has always emerged from grief, and joy has always blossomed after the darkness leaves. I was never destined to be here, on the other side of suffering (and the inevitability of more to come.)
But I am here.
The couch is here, and so is the dog as she chews her toy on the rug. My love is in the other room, and her voice is so familiar her words don’t matter. Our lives are not what we expected, but how could we have predicted any of it?
My body softens when I let it.
The tension in my shoulders lessen with a calming breath. When I place a hand over my heart, I feel more than just scars and cracks. And if I close my eyes, I can finally slow down.
I am here. You are here too!
And without the inevitable, maybe all of us can be gloriously and impossibly alive.
I've been cleaning out my inbox, and I finally dug my way back to this. I'm glad I did — this is compelling, and it's what I needed to read today. Thank you for this.