Why We Broke Up

by Daniel Handler

I gave you an adventure, Ed, right in front of you but you never saw it until I showed you, and that’s why we broke up.

I stopped looking at her and looked, my God it was beautiful, at you. I kissed you. I can feel it, my mouth on you, I have a feeling now of the feeling I had then, even though I don’t have it anymore.

let’s go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.

Or, until now, the truth of it, that I knew of course, of course I knew it, that there was a game and that you’d lost that night I met you in Al’s yard. But you seemed to like, I think, I hoped back then, that I was different.

First date, what could I do with my stupid self and the thrill of see you Monday? thinking there was time, plenty of time to see what pictures we’d made? But we never developed them. Undeveloped, the whole thing, tossed into a box before we really had a chance to know what we had, and that’s why we broke up.

I think of the travesty of what you did and the travesty of how I didn’t care at the time.

this quote has been all that has been on my mind since i read it

I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did. But that’s why right there it was doomed. We couldn’t only have the magic nights buzzing through the wires. We had to have the days, too, the bright impatient days spoiling everything with their unavoidable schedules, their mandatory times that don’t overlap, their loyal friends who don’t get along, the unforgiven travesties torn from the wall no matter what promises are uttered past midnight, and that’s why we broke up.

I waited just to see you at that kind of peace, I wanted to be beside you, I wanted you to wake up slowly or startle, or just half awaken and turn over and go back to sleep or murmur my name. I wanted to watch you forever, or sleep beside you forever, or sleep forever while you woke and watched me, something forever anyway.