Over again

It is a breath, saltwater on the bathroom floor, a half-choked sob, quickly stifled beneath the hum of corporate HVAC. It is a tearing. It is a pop. A cord cut, and suddenly you are adrift, bereft, on the eddies of freedom. He is for you, but he is not for you. He wants to see you he says, but she says he is not seeing you and so she sees no point in maintaining contact with you herself.

It is surprise. It is the lack of surprise. It is the cowardice you told him you didn't see in him. And the sudden wintry clarity of exactly what this must've been.

You realize with that sickening lurch that you'd been chasing him all this time; running after someone who, after the first few sexual rendezvous, could not get more than warmly excited to see you. Laying out banquets of emotional intimacy, generously giving and laying open invitations... to an empty room.

It hurts.

But only faintly.

And that last part scares you, just a little. You feel things so quietly now, everything constrained in bands of hesitation, of silence, of exhaustion. Even the panic, when it comes, comes softly now. The lists work better, the sharp edges of your personal traumas sanded by skilled and expensive therapists, you feel... less. Or perhaps you only recover faster; you invest less emotionally, display less brilliantly, share fewer desires, take what you can but ask for less and less each time.

And life goes on. A week later you've set the date for the next installment of this secondary-cycle; a brand new face to pore over, searching for clues as you sip cocktails and discuss yourselves.