...goodbyes.

- I think it would be better if you forgot me for a few days. She said it with a small, sad smile on her lips and her eyes focused on nothing, on nowhere.

She was getting on that melancholic train that would take her far away. I didn’t say anything. Simply pressed her tiny figure against my chest and could not help remembering that first hug that made me fall in love. But now nothing was the same. I wasn’t the same. I did not feel the same; she knew it and it slowly killed her inside.

We got lost in the requirements we had created and nothing more than ashes of the fire that lit in that first glance at each other were left. She had screamed at me in silence, imploring sadly help without anyone else offering a key to the exit. I knew what she needed then, just as I knew what she meant now. She did not want to say it. I knew she hated to think I would forget her even for a minute, and she knew that in some way I already had, that I had begun to write with a black marker on top of the lines of our story, written with weak, invisible ink. I could not look her in the eyes, those hazel, deep eyes, like only volcanoes are, and tell her. I could not speak sincerely and it was starting to physically hurt.

We kept close less than I imagined, but for much longer than I was eager to admit, and when she pulled away I felt a stupid relieve instead of the sorrow and nostalgia I was supposed to. I wouldn’t miss HER, but the absurd and undefined relationship we had taken pleasure of for the past few weeks. My need to protect her had inhibited my ability to tell her things without previously decorating and coating them with cotton so that they would attenuate the whack, just as I do with my thoughts to impede them from making to deep indentations in me.

I could not tell her the truth: that her leaving would bring me no more than relief, and rest to my razor-sharp tongue, which in her presence had to polish itself and watch its venom so that I didn’t hurt her any more than needed.

That girl with whom I once could be myself was now only witness of my ability to mask feelings and disguise reality. The situation sickened me, and seemed unfair. And, even if I hated myself for it, I was only wishing for it to end, for the love of my life to leave, and for her to take away my memories and her recriminating looks.

I felt like the worst person to ever walk the surface of the earth once I finally admitted to my insides that I desperately wanted what she was offering: for me to forget her. Why? Because I felt bad, watching her suffer like this? Because I was guilty of that suffering?  …or because I did not care anymore, and that I could not express in a voice louder than my thoughts? I didn’t know, and I still don’t.

- Then... what? We forget each other? She could not help speaking again. Why couldn’t she keep the silence? I felt frustrated.

In that moment a strong, long whistling sound made its way to us. Time to go. Her luggage was already resting in her compartment. I kissed her on the forehead, placed her on the top of the steps of the vehicle in one movement and we simply stayed there, 60 inches apart. Enough to still smell her perfume, but far enough to not be able to reach out and touch her. The doors closed and that timeworn carbon engine started up, initiating the procession of iron destined to the heart of Europe. We looked in each other’s eyes. Me, sad and expectant. Her, crying and challenging. The train started to move. As it sped up, so did my heart, and for one moment I wondered whether my decision was the right one. Only time would tell. I stared at the train until the fug coming out if it had become the smaller sister of my cigarette’s  smoke.

And I simply stayed there. Surrounded by smoke and sad family members, and with no other company than my lonely heart, which begun to seam made of stainless steel, indestructible and, worst yet, insurmountable.