Priya Parmar

Sometimes she arches away from me and wears a light halo of genius about her.

How I should have raised all her terrible destruction to the surface like a shipwrecked boat dredged up from the sea floor. But that would have given the fracture a shape, a dimension--a definite perimeter to the ruin. This way has a subtle cruelty. This way will torment. She will spend years trying to map the rift she caused and sound the damage. She will push on the bruise and grow frantic trying to repair the creeping remoteness. It is the unkindest thing I have ever done. And I will not relent. I will not do otherwise.

But to begin again? No, Virginia. There can be no beginning again. Love and forgiveness are not the same thing.

It is a terrible thing to grieve for someone who is not dead, not in love with someone else, but just no longer there.