She’s going to do the earring thing.

As if happening upon Taylor wouldn’t have been enough of a fiasco, I have to do it when she’s on a fucking date. Suddenly I’m remembering all those songs I can’t listen to anymore because of her, how I can’t smell jasmine or even think about pancakes on a Sunday morning while wrapped in blue bed-sheets without a sentimental panic, how my lampshade still has her grandmother’s old broach pinned to it from when she was undressing and stuck it on there so she wouldn’t forget it. Now it makes this strange abstract pattern on my wall whenever I turn on the lamp to read by its half-light.
It’s funny, of all the places I’ve avoided – the farmer’s market, the Crow Bar, our favorite coffee shop on 19th, not just those places but whole neighborhoods and streets – to run into her here, eating Vietnamese noodles, with some curly haired man that is wearing tight gray jeans and some big gaudy turquoise ring on his finger. Well, I’ve imagined this happening, dreaded seeing her and having to face her with those green eyes, with those red spots in her left eye that always reassured me that she was so unique, but I can’t even figure out how to handle this – it seems to be worse than any encounter I could have imagined at the market. I imagined we would have had to ask each other blank, not too personal questions about how we’ve been living, how life is since we’ve been apart for the last six months. I could handle that. We would distractedly act like we’re selecting the ripest mangos or something. We would pick up and softly squeeze the fruits in their skins, poking them to see if they are soft, as I would pretend that I haven’t missed her, that I’ve been inspired and productive with my sculpture, that her broach, shaped like a bee with its opaque agate in the middle isn’t still pinned to my lamp as if she were going to wake up tomorrow, give me a side smile, embarrassed that she’s forgotten it for so long and pin it onto her scarf.

She looks good today, but I’ve seen that green dress before, I’ve even seen her wear it with that black cardigan. I know she is going to do the earring thing with this guy. I’m sure this guy will be a sucker for it. She takes her long red sideswept bangs in her palm, this tress of hair that has a perfect wave to frame her face, but is horribly dry at the ends, and smoothes it aside, then she pulls tenderly at her long earrings – the silver ones with cloudy amethysts – she always wears them. For some reason, as she does this, her neck looks fucking perfect, even her ears look fucking perfect, and it does this thing, or at least to me, that makes you think she’s the craziest, most beautifully flawed, best woman imaginable. She’s doing it now: the hair smoothing. I should walk over there, walk to the restroom, maybe she’ll see me, maybe she’ll turn her short dark eyelashes towards me and dump whatever hipster fuck she’s with.
But as I’m watching her, she’s doing the clever earring tug, this perfect endearing fidget, I can’t help but watch this whole seduction trick unfold but only see her canvas bag with the calla lily print on it, and those books peeking out the top that she would carry around but never actually read. I see how she’s pursing her lips ever so slightly as he speaks, laughing as if she’s interested – that laugh that rings tinny when disingenuous – I heard it when she met my friends, and seemed completely at ease, until she told me later that they lacked intellectual capacities, that one of them clearly doesn’t understand the subtleties of semiotics or something.

For some reason now, I think I have seen that earring tug exactly one too many times to be charmed by it again. And for some reason now, I don’t know if this realization or missing her is the greater loss.