I lost my soulmate on a bus in Berlin

I was with you for ten years. I had been with him for just one when he left you in the luggage compartment of a budget bus parked outside Central Station. I was not there (I’m sorry) when he forgot you and got off that bus, empty-handed, took the train, two trains, back to his apartment.

It is too early Friday morning, I am swiveling back and forth in his office chair, he is fiddling with his acoustic-sunburst monstrosity as we wait to leave to wait for another train. I ask him where you are. He looks around, he does not stop playing, he thinks, fingers moving absent-mindedly across the strings, note after note of one chord that lingers like a siren.

He stands up and walks off wordlessly, carpet to linoleum squares. Why do I look around even though I know, I knew when I asked, that you are not in this room or that room? How will you ever forgive me when I tell you that for two whole days you were forgotten and I cannot promise that I will find you now?

You, who filled my middle school palms, who pressed down hard heavy silver on my skin-tight skinny jeans. Scraped my soft fingers until the skin folded up, crisp and dry, for me to peel off under my desk, letting the flakes collect in my lap like uncooked macaroni.

You weighed me down, metal, mother of pearl, my polished wooden friend, from suburb to city to cold leafy mountains where we finally found your purpose, where I quit the cover songs and used it, that first sip of heartbreak that stopped me in my tracks and nearly killed me until I used it, clashing, overlapping in sad syllables.

You believed in me, your owner, keeper, nurse, even as I removed all 25 of your metal bolts and split you into halves, lightening my load and dampening your beautiful jazz sound so you could live on the street, where people tossed coins and bills into your red velvet cradle while I sang my songs, shaky poem versus junkyard clang of steel strings until my voice broke and you went on, duet with wet eyes and throat squeaks. Then we crawled home, stopping at the discount grocery store for an expired mango, brown and rancid on one side of the pit but perfect sweet orange candy on the other.

And you know what? Those nights you lay in my bed, your neck with its own pillow, resting but not asleep. You and I would work in the dark, blindly building sandcastle songs and washing them away with sleep so heavy, we needed no curtains come morning. I still chase their ghosts, caught in that Brooklyn bedroom. We together have buried so many songs and forgotten to mark their graves.

I remember one night, not Brooklyn, not even America (how did we get here, do you know?), that you could not stop a foreign hand reaching for something forbidden. Then I took you, left my suitcase and passport but took you into the subway at dawn, shaking with the train, snot river from nose to hair, sticky bridge down to gray subway floor.

In that first apartment I sang so quietly, afraid the neighbors would poke their heads across the balcony divider and tell me to keep it down, even when the sun was shining and children screamed in the streets, slamming soccer balls against garage doors. You came outside, where you hung helplessly from my shoulders as I biked, too fast, first time in this neighborhood, and you hit a lamppost with a terrifying crack-buzz. I’m so sorry, I was so embarrassed, I waited until I was home to run my fingers across you, fearing the worst.

You were there when he was not, when he was at a show or visiting his parents, those parents I had not met because I was just the traveling musician who had stayed too long. You did not cry out when I left you under a couch for two months because, oh yes, thank God, he had finally changed his mind, and I was too in love to play love songs anymore.

You trusted me when I trusted him to carry you. Only a few hours, but you had no idea how tired he would be. You were not his, after all, you were mine. You are mine. And though I love him, I would do anything to have you in my arms instead.