The center of gravity falls like this: You walk into your room, smell the scent of her perfume and notice that she’s left a small note besides your unlaundered pillows. Come meet me at St. Mark’s Place. You follow her orders by taking the next cab down—the fact that it’s only five blocks means nothing. Time is a resource that cannot be replenished.
The air is smoggy from the smokers outside The Continental. Second-hand DJ music blares as a Rastafarian on a bike sets off to rid the world of bad people. He’s become delusive, and his life is destructive to the human condition. But he lives to see yet another day.
You look around, but there is no sight of her. Has she slipped away? Where was my two weeks notice? It immediately strikes you that you should yell out her name. And you do so, in the busiest hour of the day, in the busiest street in East Village. People turn around and look at you. Some smile thinking you’re an obscene romantic. Others are annoyed and want to physically harm you. The bottom line remains: You cannot find her.
Two weeks pass, and the fervor in your heart still beats fast. I don’t like goodbyes in bed. Beds aren’t meant for goodbyes. All you wanted were two simple weeks: The first to ease in the acceptance that this isn’t going to last, to make yourself believe that everything was for the best, to learn to detach yourself from her. The second to reconciliate.
But the center of gravity fell that beautiful morning while you lay in bed. The mountains in the Pacific collapsed and volcanoes spewed forth an unending stream of solitude. Like sleep, she had come and gone. Like a dream, she had vanished as you opened your eyes.