everything goes thump.

Today is my wedding anniversary, and just writing that my chest gets tight and crazy, and my heart feels like it's on fire. I thought maybe I would cry when I wrote it, but my eyes just burn instead. I have been crying on and off all day. I can't. I can't think about all the hopes and secret happinesses we harbored seven years ago. Because I just get this sharp thing in my throat that presses against the back and makes me feel like I'll never breathe free again. So instead I stare out the window, through the vertical blinds and the mesh and the college students walking by clutching their cups of coffee. They are so blithe and smooth. I hate them, a little, but mostly because they remind me of me a long time ago and bring back that sharp thing against the back of my throat.

So instead I look at the orange light, the one right next to that nice wide tree. I look at the stones piled carefully into a low wall and cemented together. I imagine their texture. I look at the blue and yellow lights off in the distance, the trees silhouetted against a bright white building far away, inside of which are hundreds of people working away and moving through their own lives, their own struggles. Maybe they are walking around with their own sharp things in the back of their own throats, but I can't see that from here. All I see from here, in my imagination, are heads bent industriously over desks, fingers tapping on keyboards, someone swirling a beaker in a laboratory. They work individually and in pairs, and sometimes they laugh, sometimes they make soft little noises to themselves, sometimes one of them maybe brushes the hand of another one as they hand something off, and they are not alone. Sometimes other people not being alone is all I can see.

I stand up and get some water from the cooler. I look at the print of my chapstick on the rim of the glass. I let my eyes not focus, my thoughts float. I turn away from the pile of books and papers. It's hard to get work done tonight.

My heart gives an unexpected thump, and I take a deep breath. There will be tomorrow. It always turns to tomorrow, eventually.

* * *

I didn't plan to write about this, today.  In fact, I planned not to. But here I am just writing anyway, with Heather of the EO. Meet the other just writers or link up here.