Page 128 of David's Love

Why did it take me so long?

I flip the ziplock bag upside down and let the contents fall to the bed.

My eyes move over the scraps of paper.

I find all kinds of things written down.

Some are important. Some are not.

One piece of paper catches my eye.

It’s a list of dates, and I quickly learn it’s a summary of all the times they’ve seen each other.

It starts with the day they have met. A few words are scribbled under each date.

It’s like a minimalist diary.

The words are poetic and nostalgic, and it dawns on me that they were recorded in retrospect, not when they happened.

She uses the past tense, and the tone of her writings expresses regret more than anything else.

The list is neat, organized, and written with the dedication of someone who doesn’t want to miss a bit of a timeline they consider a treasure.

My findings are at odds with what he said.

Without necessarily misleading me, he painted a picture of someone who had been impulsive and unreliable. Maybe she was. Maybe there was a hidden side to her. A side she didn’t want to reveal to him.

Whatever way she was, emotions swirl now in my chest.

I feel for this woman.

She put down every little significant detail.

The radiography of a story with an abrupt ending.

The big gaps when they were away from each other.

The pain she struggled with and found a few new names for. Fever and misery. Torment and abandonment.

She felt abandoned by him, an irrational take on it, as she had noted in her writings.

I lean back against the pillow, intrigued by Anna more than ever.

The soul sickness, as she herself also appropriately calls it, is interrupted by elation, love, and fulfillment.

She doesn’t sound like someone who had fallen out of love.

Every signal she’d gotten from him.

Every message, call, video call, or written letter had meant the world to her.

None of them could replace him.

She says that.

I flip the paper over, and the inventory of her feelings ends abruptly with a thick dark line she construes as a shifting point.

I don’t know what the meaning of that line is in their timeline, but underneath, in tiny flowery letters, she tries to explain herself with some clipped commentary.

---