sedaqa.
Chicago. Who knew she'd go so far? Here I am, on the verge of moving across the country, and she had already left me behind. Married in 2003, moved to Chicago shortly thereafter, I assume. She didn't tell me until it was too late; she didn't tell me until it was too late for me to rush in and romantically interrupt the ceremony. "You belong with me," is all I needed to shatter the world that day.
We always promised each other we'd send wedding invitations. But she knew better. She knew I couldn't sit by and watch what was ours become someone else's. This was ours; we built it and nurtured it and never let it mature because we never really had a chance. Forever the questions will break me down, unable to answer what rhetoric remarks my heart will invent.
Change is coming. Winds blow my life like a candy wrapper in the Windy City, until I dangle on the sands of the est coast, a new life, a new breath... but the same old emptiness. Silence and emptiness.