Lighter than lemon

© Julie Trémouilhe

I was mad and sad.
I cried over meaningless things while I thought there were no tears left.
I surprised myself with a deeper sadness and was mad at him because he was the source of it.
But there, in that bar, crying about nothing, being everything but me, adopting behaviours I abhorred, I was simply a fool.
I told him the hidden cause.
It did not change his unapologetic look.
I knew then that I was waiting for a sorry that would not come again.
It had shone at the very beginning of a renewed us.
This sorry about so many things.
And now, it had vanished.
Sorry but not sorry, instead, it seemed.
He told me just to drink and dance.
I tried to be lighter than the lemon of our tequilas.
Lighter than salt.
I remember the words, repeated endlessly in my head:
lighter than lemon
lighter than lemon
lighter than lemon
as I walked in drunk silence next to him, back to my place.
In the morning, the image was still floating in the mist of my brain.
I wondered how I could manage to be lighter than lemon when the smallest thing felt so heavy to bear lately.
I knew I needed to achieve it, in order to outlive the days, the past, the ideas, the people.
But all I had shown till now was the very opposite of a light lemon.
We had already talked the subject over and over.
It was the subject itself, by nature, that would maybe never be over.
All I had to do was to accept the painful truth, or leave.
To find a way to let it go, to blow the anger away and not to throw it at everyone’s face on every occasion.
To be lighter than lemon.