Separation

But she, he must see this, surely he saw this, she’d stayed in the heart of their separation, she’d stayed right there, in the same place, in the death which was also her second birth, she’d stayed because she couldn’t go anywhere else, because she had nowhere else to go and no strength to go anywhere had she had anywhere to go, she’d stayed in that death, gone right into it, into the death that had made her who she was today, and who she was today was not the same as who she was then, before she died and was reborn, before she was destroyed and grew back into life, grew herself back out of death and became bigger, a bigger person rooted deeply within herself, he’d see this, surely he’d see this if ever they met again, but if they met again there might be another death waiting for her, their meeting might hold another, final death for her, a final cutting down, so that perhaps it was better to stay, to stay and grow further out of death, in spite of death, after death, to grow, unless they met and all was the same, unless they met again, somehow, and the mist of the years evaporated and the years were as nothing and they fell back together, grew back together in that other kind of death, the death of love itself, the healing death of love, but she mustn’t let herself fall back into that trap, which was the very death she’d grown out of, and in any case, who knew who he was now, maybe he hadn’t grown at all, maybe he hadn’t died at all, but had shrugged her off and skated onto a shallow life with other women, other friends, like so many, like most people seemed to do, maybe she through her strange death had outgrown him and he didn’t even know what this kind of death was, maybe if she tried to tell him he’d only get confused, or bored, in fact maybe she’d never really known him at all, never seen his true self but had fallen in love with a phantom in her mind, maybe all this otherworldly business about death was a consequence of her own personality and she’d have died anyway for any number of reasons, maybe he was incidental and she’d be disappointed if they met again, disappointed at his shallowness, at his distractedness, his failure to understand, to remember, to feel, maybe she’d be confused by her own memories, her own suffering, or even, after regaining her poise, secretly mock him, laugh at him even, or shrug him off as he’d done her.