Illustration by Chistopher Monro

I have been dreaming about him up lately. In one dream, he appeared, handsome and loveable as I remember him, and uttered some very simple words: My heart is with you. He said just that and then he vanished among the bright scenery of my night journeys. I had this heart soothing dream in the times when I doubted he still loved me or even worse, that he had never loved me. I remember that during the cold, winter night when we kissed for the first time, he touched my leg with his forehead when we were sitting and laughing our hearts out on a bench. Up lately, I’ve been listening to one Leonard Cohen song every morning. I cling to some words and then silently wait for memories or fantasies to come and visit me, while smoking in my balcony. I got stuck on these lyrics: ‘Exquisite music, Alexandra laughing. Do not say the moment was imagined’.

There is always the danger after a break up that we end up questioning if love ever existed. But it is there, in the moments we shared, in the soft, sensitive spots he discovered on my body, in the way he caressed my wrists all the time when we were together, in his eyes, in everything I wanted him to be and he really was and in the ways I wanted him to be, but he wasn’t. We are able to let go and forgive a lover when all the bright, violent emotions temper down and everything we have left is something soft and delicate, the warmth of a feeling. Something that is not tangible anymore and which cannot be defined by common time measurement units.  Something delicate and soft, the quality of good memories.

 

When we hug someone for a long time, our hearts start opening and we are able to feel each other deeply. ‘You are very sensitive, aren’t you? he told me. And I just nodded and my mind holds a memory of the bright reflections on the lake at nigh, his arms touching my back and a half profile of him with his eyes closed that my memory managed to capture.

There will come a time when we will stop taking pictures of everything, when we will stop trying to imprint some golden shadows on the surface of our memory, there will come a time when we will abandon this mimetism: living for the sake of remembering. But before that, we should dive deep inside our memory looking for patterns, looking for the way they build up, the befores and afters of what stands still, looking for what is truly golden and what is just shadowy.

The night when I saw him for the last time, there must have been a seagulls invasion in Bucharest. It’s strange because the city is not close to the sea, they probably come to give a more romantic setting for departures. I felt his arms around me and as my heart was slowly opening, I started sobbing. It must be heartbreaking, isn’t it, to hold the sobbing body of a lover, the same body that must have been designed for pleasure, the same body one used to hold and feel the thrills and its way of shivering with pleasure. The night when he departed, our eyes were the last parts of our bodies that touched each other. And after that, the night fell. A thick, dark fog covering my reason, a dark fog that had the color of sorrow, a scenery that had nothing to do anymore with romantic settings, but still had the phantasy quality of a dream. I knew everything I had to do is to filter the poison that was threatening to drawn me. It’s unavoidable to get hurt out of love, but it’s up to us how long we hold the poison of being hurt in our hearts. If you don’t try to forgive, you will not be able to move on.

What exactly I had to forgive, I will leave it up to your imagination. You can fill in your personal reasons for feeling hurt here. But let’s say that among common wounds there are:

-the apparent total lost in how you have being doing, no more how are you, no more sweet nonsense

-a sudden replacement with another person to whisper the sweet nonsense to

-your body feels suddenly unhappy and, of course, lonely

-and for fellow artists, a total lack of consideration for the muse status you granted your lover with.

Feel free to extend this list with things you manage to forgive and we could create an universal dictionary of human emotions.

You know how forgiveness feels like? It’s something tingling in your chest and then you feel warmth invading you, starting from your chest and spreading in your whole being. It’s a warmth that you are capable of, but at times you blocked it for fear there is no one to receive and you would end up drained. It’s a warmth that does not need any words to describe it, it’s silent and uplifting. But if you were to speak your warmth out loud, you would say only this: even if you’re stupid, I still love you.

—

Laura Livia Grigore is a poet, painter and psychology enthusiast, with a background in space engineering. She likes to experiment with various mediums and types of writing. Her artwork is orientated on emotions, reflecting her opinion that most of the answers we need can be found inside ourselves, although the hardest thing to do is to be sincere with oneself. You can purchase her book here. 

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