my heart is sore, my heart soars

As I go to pick up the milk from the doorstep this morning there is an odd collusion of events. As I collect my mail from the mat, there is a knock at the door. Funny, since I have a bell, but then again it hasn't been working too well this week. I check the mail and find that there is something from E., which immediately has me grinning like a village idiot. Then I open the door and there is P., standing there in the rain handing me back a bag full of my stuff.

The girl on the step, the letter in my hand, the rain: what does this moment mean?

For a moment I am in a movie of my own life into which some hack writer has chosen to plot this corny 'poignant' coincidence. What else could it mean? Here is THE girl, the one I thought was THE one, handing me a bag of my things in a final, symbolic gesture: the End of the Affair. And all I want to do is get inside and open up the package in my hand. This person who drove me to the edge of despair, who upended my reason in a near-cataclysmic amour fou seems so insignificant now in relation to all that this envelope promises. I mumble thanks and excuse myself, not forgetting to make the perfunctory enquiry about my missing snare drum.

Can a heart really be that fickle? Was all that I felt over those miserable months even real? If so, is the way my heart feels now just as empty, superficial? Just what exactly is it that I should be feeling?

Whatever happens next in this absurd movie there will at least be a great soundtrack, courtesy of the CD in the package, though I think that this will have to be the theme song.