“I Know”

All in one breath he told her he loved her and that it consumed him like hunger. They stood outside a café, shivering, a beautiful girl and an awkward boy. She said, “I know.” It tore his heart. It wasn’t hard enough to break it, but the tear was deep. He’d needed to see her heavy grin rise toward her eyes as she confessed. But all she’d said was, “I know.” At her apartment they made love. He was quick and frantic, as if he knew their time was at its end. Afterwards they rested on her pillows, a space of rumpled sheets between them, and he asked, “Why not?” She looked away. Got up. Found cigarettes. “I wish I did,” she said, and fire smoldered between her lips.

In the weeks that followed he sent flowers to her job. He left cards on her windshield. He followed her to work and sat outside her office. At night he wrote poems about the crazy way she raced through traffic. She failed to recognize the value of this attention. The beautiful girl refused to accept the fact that his addiction to her was unbreakable. “My love is forever,” he wrote in red spray paint on her Honda. She called that night and ordered him to stay away. “Don’t ever come near me. Ever.”

They knocked one morning, two policeman in suits and asked him, “Do you know where she’s gone?” He explained that they’d broken up, that she’d found some crazy guy with an obsessive nature and that it was a turn-on for her. “He even vandalized her car,” he said. The cops glanced at one another. “Lots of crazies out there,” one of them said. He replied, “I know.” She’s forever close by now, but he only thinks of her when he’s cold and lonely and watching the smile on a lovely strangers face…

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