Freedom is tied with you

“Do you love me?” the silence after those words resonated deep down to my heart and it shattered like glass breaking from a high note. Inimical was the silence. I looked at him with eyes that have never doubted his feelings but now these eyes want more than simple feelings. Love is intricately fragile. I began to ruminate about my love, the feeling was something which was heavy now, usually it wasn’t a burden.

His face betrayed his deep contemplation. His eyes would look side to side, his eyes would close, he bit his lips, scratched an imaginary itch, and then looked at me with the most casual glance. Even silence holds a place in this world, silence is still noise, and all I could hear was silence. Space to think was not what I desired.

“No,” I almost missed his answer. His voice was so mystifying I sometimes simply thought about it for hours at a time, it contained a touch of melancholy, but the rest was just desolate. I don’t remember it sounding this way when we first met, what happened to you?

“Why not?” my face was contorted in this expression which I didn’t want him to see. My eyebrows knitted together and strangely enough it reminded me of Timothèe Chalamet crying in the movie Call Be Your Name. He was crying…I’m crying. That realization led me to bite my lip in vexation, it was embarrassing, it was profound more than the feeling of loneliness. It tore at my eyelids to open, to view the uncomfortableness he displayed on his face. My lip was bleeding from my teeth digging in, the pain was there to distract me and hopefully he’d leave. I looked at his feet, they walked all over my apartment, my life, my heart. It felt like someone cut out a huge hole in my chest and put cement to replace it. As if I went to the bathtub and laid there, I would be drowned by my own body weight.

“I don’t know,” His eyes looked up and he sighed freely like a huge pressure was lifted. He reached for my shoulder to comfort me and I let him. I let the man who just told me he doesn’t love me, I let him comfort me because I still loved him.

“Are you leaving me now?” Those words left a taste of acid in my mouth, my brain wanted to throw up and my body convulsed yet my heart yearned for the words he wouldn’t say.

“I don’t think being tied up, for the both of us I mean, it isn’t good.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He just said that he would never love me.

“Okay then I’ll give you some space and sometime later I’ll get my stuff, alright?” Nonchalant.

“Sounds good to me.” He didn’t even consider it. His feet lifted and stepped farther away from me. The door closed silently. As if the world was trying to mock me there wasn’t even any traffic outside or birds chirping. When your world is silent you make your own noise. That noise can be many things, screams, cries, laughter, or thoughts. I found that idea of silence is false and that brings me comfort.

I laid down on the floor. My eyes were fixated on the ceiling which was an egg-shell color, the sun filtered through my windows. I felt the hard floor on the bones of my shoulder. It’s funny, I felt free when I was bound by someone than when I am free of them, ironic. He left me. What is freedom again?