The Ferris Wheel was stopped in place on the night we broke up for good. I noted this as an aside while en route to the only man you have ever worried about, and the only one I went to with my heart in my hands, the heart you returned to me last night. I told you it was a phase, and you agreed. I told you that you were wrong last time, and you are wrong this time, and you said Probably. I told you that I would not allow it, and that since it’s my heart too I should have a say. You said that was adorable, and I envisioned myself with my insides on the outside, frantically trying to breathe through a mouth ensconced in what was once my stomach, staring at you through my ribcage, while you kissed where my hair used to be and told me it was hard for you too.

You said that I deserved better, and could have better. I told you that I knew that already and that if I wanted better I would have abandoned you for it long ago, and that I do not want better, only you in all your glorious fuckery. I told you that you are the only thing I do on purpose, and that it’s not up to you to decide whether I’m selling myself short because I want what I want, and I am grown enough to know it when I have it. You said that none of that mattered, and told me again how difficult this was and that you didn’t want to hurt me, and kissed me on the forehead.

I asked you why you lied, and you said that you didn’t. I told you that saying you didn’t want to hurt me was not entirely true, since you kept doing it and doing it of your own free will. I asked you if you had been taken over by aliens, forcing your hand while you pounded frantically from the Plexiglass lobes of your consciousness, desperately begging for me to hear the real you and release you from your prison of stupidity before it was too late. You laughed, and said Sugarplum, you’re impossible.

I left you sobbing and bereft when I told you that I did not want to see you, or hear from you, or know how you were doing. You could not believe I could be so unyielding. What you do not know is that I can’t see you or hear you or recognize your placement, because I have eaten my own senses as I fled from my beating heart, my castle in flames, my cities overrun. You did not say that I was adorable, and you did not kiss your favorite hand.

I gathered what was left of myself and went to the only place I could, the only fortress that has never closed to me, and the only person that has ever known me intuitively, instinctively, and begged to be let in. I know what time it is, and I am in pieces. I know in my bones that this signifies the real end, the true end, and I hand him my parts and pieces, and ask him to take them away. Instead he sorts through the outsides to find the insides, and when everything is back in place he tells me which parts are his favorites and when he knew they were, and where we were and what I was wearing and tells me that you were right, about everything, and that you will never, ever know why or what’s been lost. He unlocks a room in his own heart for me to wait until the tide recedes, wait until the frost is gone, wait until I can wait no more at which time you will be standing in front of me, having understood, having recognized what’s lost and mounted a search to reclaim it, but by then you will not even recognize me, what with my left on my right and my face turned inward.