Two Pound Coin

Why does it hurt so very much? This mess of change in my pocket that I'm afraid to look at. The feeling of a heptagonal coin between my fingers. A small gold piece I know so well, always carried in my front right coat pocket for quick use. All these are painful reminders of the years we've spent and the day we parted. Why did I leave? Why did I have to leave? I never should have left you behind. I never should have gotten on that plane and the whole ride to the airport, the whole near hour long drive to the airport from my flat on the east side at four in the morning, I knew I was making a terrible mistake. The rain was light on the taxi window as I watched my world become a distant memory right in front of me. Perhaps it was the biggest mistake I've ever made, but I cannot undo what I have done.

As we drove through the sleeping city, every familiar building and sight pained me. Every red bus, every road sign, every street I used to walk down and place I used to visit. All that was staring at me for the last time and I thought nothing. I felt nothing. I saw the rain dampened flags clinging to their buildings and the droplets accumulating on the pavement, and I felt not a pang of nostalgia for the time spent together. Nothing.

I didn't think of anything but getting away from you. Getting far, far away from you and all the misery you've caused me. All the tears I've cried, all the moments you made me feel isolated from the people I love, all the little things I came to hate about you so very, very much. The feeling of boredom that had set in by the end of our time together consumed me. I was restless. The routine tired me. The excitement you once provided had long since faded away and the joy you brought went with it. You were once an adventure for me, but you turned into a nightmare and I couldn't see the dream that I fell in love with so long ago. I was such an impetuous child for running away without hesitation. The consequences of my actions failed to sink in by the time I boarded that plane and my last chance to stay passed untaken. I never should have left you that way.

Stupid me, I was lured away by the thrill of something new, of something exotic. I wanted something you couldn't provide me. The thought of new experiences in a new place far, far away from your clutches wildly appealed to me like a gleaming diamond ring that only turned out to be zirconia in disguise. When I left, all I wanted was to escape you, to never return to your grasp. Now, I'd give anything to have you back within my reach; to have you be mine again. I think of the days you used to belong to me with a heavy heart. The thought that you might never again be the one I call my own is a soul crushing thought I try to quickly extinguish from my mind each time it pops up, but it's like a trick candle; the flame just won't go out.

I do not know how I manage to survive without you. The days have blurred into weeks into months and it still feels like yesterday somehow. The dream of returning still burns faintly, waiting to be blown out. How the weight of this pressure doesn't crush me in my sleep when I'm dreaming of you, I simply do not know. I dream of you so frequently without intention. You slip in so quietly and undetected like carbon monoxide and poison me in my bed at night. I would prefer to be poisoned. That way I would never have to wake up to the harsh reality that I've unknowingly brought upon myself. The worst part is I awake from these dreams thinking I am still there. I am still at home in my own bed with the flag draped across the wall and the sound of early morning construction sliding under my balcony door to disturb me once again. I wake up and for that brief moment before my brain kicks in and my eyes adjust, I am there where I should be and you are still mine. But I cannot call you mine anymore and I have come to accept the fact that I never could. You did not belong to me. You were always in my heart, but you were never truly mine. Fate simply did not intend it to be and I have never believed in fate.

However, sometimes, I cannot shake the thought that I have lost you permanently. I will never lay eyes on you again or feel you surround me with your warmth in September. The thought of you will never bring the serenity it once did. It can now only injure worse than any physical wound I could possible sustain. I cannot shake the overwhelming emptiness I feel when the memories plague me. Everything is a potential trigger that leaves me helpless to this feeling. You were everything I had and everything that was solely mine. I built a life with you at the centre and everything depended on you keeping me as your own. If you were to ever turn me away, I would be irrevocably lost. I worked for that life that I so recklessly abandoned and for what? What did you do to me that made me despise you so? Someone tell me, because I don't remember anymore.

I swear I hear your accent sometimes. I hear it and in lingers in my mind, providing both comfort and agony. I hear the way you pronounce your letters and silently correct the words of others in my head when they do not sound like yours. I single out the words that are distinctly you in everything I read, everything I listen to, always taking an extra moment to savour the rarity of them these days when once they were all I knew. Even your worst voice sounds alluring with the distance between.

Photographs are what kill me most. Of course you are going on without me. I did not expect anything to change, I just wish I could be part of it. My heart drops into my stomach whenever I see you. The longing distorts my vision because the you I see in these photos is not the you I remember, but maybe only now can I see the true beauty in you when before I took your heavenliness for granted. You may not be much to other people, who think nothing of your understated elegance. You have never been flashy or colourful, and lord knows your grey appearance and cold nature doesn't make you stand out as desirable, but you have always been quaintly charming. It was the quality I loved most about you. And I've always been flashy and colourful enough for the both of us.

I reach into my pocket of this jacket I have not worn since that fateful morning I departed and feel each bit of change in my hand. Turning this gold and silver coin you have left with me between my fingers, feeling the ridges around the edge and admiring, for the first time, the intricate design on the back side, I do not know whether to be overcome with sadness from the void you have left in my heart or delighted by a token that reminds me the long lost dream we had was real. I have held this coin in my hand so many times, but I have never felt its worth like this. I have never felt you like this. Have I made a mistake in leaving you? This coin has convinced me I have. I have never loved with an intensity so great; one that makes my heart swell with happiness and shatter with sorrow and deep regret for the choices I have made. I now know I will never love another in the way that I have always loved you. Nothing completes me, nothing satisfies me like your embrace and your familiarity. As I put this coin away for safe keeping until the day I might use it again, I feel in my heart that nowhere and nothing will ever feel like home in the way that you do.

I am only fearful that I may never see home again.