There used to be a time when he was like a god to me, I was unable to doubt him in anyway, I accepted everything he said or did without a second thought. There used to be a time when I knew everything there was to know about him and he knew everything about me. We would finish each other’s sentences, read each other’s minds. Now he doesn’t even look me in the eye. How could things have changed so much?

When we were in high school everyone pictured us as the perfect couple, and we were. No sentence containing his name was complete unless it had mine too, we were a pair; we became a whole separate entity when our names weren’t joined. He wasn’t just my high school sweetheart or first love; he was my soul mate, my reason for being. The story goes that God made women from the rib of man, doesn’t that mean we all have someone who is our other half? If it isn’t him for me, there is no one else. Has life distorted his view so that he can no longer see that?

My husband the corporate piranha, my husband the perfect man, my husband the smiling angel, my husband the liar and cheat. All these different faces just make it harder for me to discern the truth. Who was this stranger who called himself my husband, is he even a stranger? Was I so young and foolish to have my heart beguiled by the Morning Star? If I leave him and forget the way he hurt me do I forget the good in him too?

I am his Ri In, his wife. Yet I can’t be sure that he was my Junsu. It was only in times like this that I knew the person who lay beside me in bed wasn’t a stranger. Watching him in his peaceful slumber, the pale lavender of his eyelids fluttering lightly, his pink pouty lips slightly ajar, his hair a unique mix of auburn and copper swept over his forehead, I know that he’s still my Junsu. Hidden from me are his molten brown eyes that shine effervescently when he smiles. These are the same lips that whispered my name; that said “I love you.”

I don’t want to be fool-hearted, but I’m outnumbered in my head. The memories of my Junsu refuse to be hushed. They’re reminders of the sweetest simplicities that echo in my heart. Every look cast my way in a time when he truly saw me. The electrifying tingle when he traced his fingers across my lifeline, one he was sure matched his. Does he still remember catching fireflies in a jar? Eating those sweet cherries straight from the tree? Do these memories plague him like the lost souls on the Lethe, having knowledge of sweetness but not the confidence in its truth, a future of oblivion?

On nights like these I never have to hear the sound of another woman’s name on his tongue. The melancholy and bittersweet tones he addresses me by are fiction. The sounds of his heartbeat screams Ri In, wait for me! Life is a journey we all take, our roads twisting and turning in different directions. We’ve all got our own bumps in the road, it only makes sense that my struggle would come from what I love most. In the end I know his traveling heart will reach its destination and I shall be waiting at the end of the tracks, our paths finally colliding. In these silent nights falling asleep to the sound of his heart wills me on. On these silent nights I’m his Ri In and he’s my Junsu.

This make believe will get me through another lonely night.



Fin