by Tess Kelly
I walked. I walked on a winter day that could have been spring. I walked through my bare-treed neighborhood, inhaled the sweet fragrance of daphne, savored the sunshine that burnished my face and blessed my hair. On a rare blue-skied day in Portland’s February I knew that yellow orb could slip behind steel-wool clouds tomorrow and not return til May. So I walked.
A man cycled toward me on a road bike. A man of average build who wore wire-rimmed glasses and aimed his broad smile at the bullseye of my heart. A man whose body would fit well with mine, the perfect width to wrap my arms around, to feel the heat seep through his neon-green jacket. A man who looked so much like my ex I nearly called out to him.
We were together nine years but he’s gone, been gone nearly five. I don’t just mean we broke up and he moved out. I mean he disappeared from my world and phoenixed six months later as a curly-haired ash blond with cuter clothes than ever hung in my closet. A woman who wore mauve lipstick and jet-black mascara and the scent of Calvin Klein’s Eternity behind her ears. A woman who out-heeled and out-breasted me. A woman whose voice would rise to alto.
He’s gone and she’s happier. And I’m happy for her.
And yet.
The man pedaled past me, each revolution launching him farther away. The sun glinted off his white helmet like stardust. He turned the corner and I walked home, to the home we once shared. Sometimes we long for the simplest things. I wished I’d saved one of my ex’s voicemail messages. One in baritone, back in the days when he called me sweetheart.
Tess Kelly’s essays have appeared in Passages North, Cleaver Magazine, River Teeth, BULL, and elsewhere. She lives, writes, and teaches in Portland, Oregon.
Emerge Literary Journal 