“I understand how you feel,” he says.

she looks at him. her face is covered in scorn. “really?” she asks.

“of course. you fell in love with the wrong person.” he says. “it happens to everyone.”

she laughs. she looks away. she lights a cigarette. she exhales. shaking her head, she finally, quietly, says

“the wrong person? really? well, I don’t think you do understand how I feel very well at all actually. you wanna know why?

only one person has ever come remotely fucking close to making me feel understood about anything at all. never, not until the moment I met him, did I feel even a little bit understood. and… I looked him in the eye, I listened to him beg me for help, and… walked the fuck away.

now, tell me again, how does that feel? to leave the only person who ever knew you, the only person you memorized, your bible, your religion, the only thing you trusted or believed in, the only love you ever wanted, the only beauty you’d ever seen.

we would get down, so hard, night after night, breaking bottles and biting each other’s lips. coke and whiskey and violence and fear and rock ‘n’ roll and love. I felt my knees hit concrete, and I closed my eyes and lay back on the pavement and I saw my own death and the births of our kids in front of me, and I laughed, breathless with relief, to finally know what it was like to be a woman and to belong to someone and to know who I’d love, every moment, until my last. It was the purest, deepest most fatal love. the most beautiful love. I couldn’t have imagined anything more beautiful in my dreams. when I met him, it felt like. that was the moment I realized my life had purpose.

and I left him to die. I looked past him and walked ahead.

so, tell me again. tell me that you know how I feel, and that the problem, this powerful, bottomless grief, is because I fell in love with the wrong person. when I double over in pain, like something inside me is broken, because of the consequences of what he chose, and what I chose

tell me that the tragedy here is that he was not the right man for me.” he looks at her a long time and says nothing.

she nods, stands up, turns and walks out onto the lawn and looks up at the darkness. “yeah,”

she says.

“that’s what I figured.”

“marie,” he calls after her. “marie. you’ve gotta understand. that’s how it feels to you, but that isn’t how it is. there is no tragedy here. I know it feels like the end of the world.”

she doesn’t look at him. “you’re right,” she says.

“you’re right. that is how it feels.”

“you had to do it,” he says. she looks at him, finally.

“is that supposed to make it feel better?

well?

is it?”