The hardest part at the moment was the fact that everywhere he went in his home, she was there. Whatever loveliness that had taken place, the sweetest moments of joy and pleasure, the first moments of discovery and connection, the last moments of passion and pleasure before the axe fell and she catapulted him from her life, all happened in his house, in the place where he lived, so that now, as she was gone, he was left with the fragments of bliss that jabbed at his heart and fevered his thoughts.  Where could he go, when it was his home that was occupied by the ghosts of intimacies lived and tender words said, and insinuations about a possible future together and the ecstasies of love were whispered.

Just a week before there was fire and passion and delight, deep pleasure from their words and shared touch and visions of tantric glory. But once again, two days later, in daylight, in the presence of company, in her effort to be connecting, to let him know he was more than a plaything to her, their words fell into a canyon of misunderstanding, through a cataract of disappointment, and into an eddy of confusion, so that what was just days before a pool of pleasure became a toxic pond of defensiveness and despondency. And with that, she decided it was too much.  He was always disappointed in her.  He was always frustrated with her.  And inside, he simply wondered if she loved him.  All of his plying and pressing was simply his failed attempt to know if she loved him.  Sure, she had said the words, but as she herself had said before, the words meant nothing unless there was action behind them.  He had tried his best to be kind, to be thoughtful, to be unintrusive, to be accommodating, to be available, to be encouraging, but in time, with all of his efforts, she was cordial to him, but he always felt like a snack to her, like an option, like an elective in her life.  Sure, he knew she was busy in school and could not spend much time with him.  But when she spoke of free time, she alluded to the time they would enjoy together when she didn’t have any homework to do and could play.

And then the break came, and she filled half of it- and particularly the long weekend he had off and had freed up based on the assumption that she would spend it with him- to leave town to visit friends and family out of state.

He tried to understand her choice- the number of days away, the timing of her trip- in light of what she had told him before.  He tried to voice his confusion and disappointment as best as he could, but in the end, it sounded like the too familiar litany she already knew that left her feeling frustrated.  The voiced frustration grew to become another great disappointment he verbalized within her mind, and it, added to all of the others she felt that were part of a developing pattern, troubled her.   And the disappointment led to another of those unresolvable squabbles they were now facing every time they just tried to talk.

Until yesterday, when the pattern convinced her that what they were doing was unresolvable.  What he was saying was merely unhappiness to her.  And in him, what he was trying to say was simply, “Do you love me?”  In his brief and tumultuous history of romance, he struggled deeply to recognize it.

But instead of finding answers, she found fear, and he felt forsaken.  And over the next few days, her fears congealed and led her to make the decision.

Now the home was a mausoleum to his heartfelt hopes and the tender moments of their recent romance.  And as he walked through it, room by room, he saw the ghosts and wept.