Did it hurt?

Did it hurt when you first felt its absence?

Does it hurt now?

Will it always hurt?

Will it always feel like something is missing? Like something is amiss? Like you’ll never truly get back into the groove you once had? Like it will forever elude you?

When you walk, and your footsteps are hitting the pavement, do you feel that they are the same footsteps you had when you weren’t weighed down by the burden you carry currently?

Can footsteps feel different?

When you smile, is it the same smile you had when you were marching through the streets at your happiest? The smile you had when you were screaming the lyrics to “Hey Ya” in the middle of the dance floor, glowing from the sweat that fell from your pores and the strobe lights that left you seeing in hues of purple the day after? The smile that never left your face when you were taking the subway to Brooklyn to eat your favourite sugar cakes…your girl on your side, your arm slung around her neck and her head on your chest?

She smelt like sugar. She smelt like sugar and roses. But she also smelt like cocoa butter. You don’t normally like the smell of cocoa butter; in fact, it makes you want to retch. But when she wore it, it suddenly became all you could think about and all you could smell. You smelt it everywhere during those four months: when you were filling up your car, when you smelt roses, when you made eggs, when you smelt clothes from the washing machine…it lingered lightly in each scent, a ghostly reminder of her presence and significance. In the months after she said goodbye you started frantically searching for the scent everywhere, the franticness turning to desperation when the tinges of grey returned to your sight. As it faded from your nose…when you were no longer able to recall its distinct notes, the sharpness of the chocolate conflated with the subdued but extricable scent of butter…you ask yourself if you faded along with it.

So does your happiness smell like sugar and roses? Like cocoa butter? Should you go to Walmart, buy the scent, and lather yourself with it in an attempt to re-experience the most joy you have ever felt in your life? Should you buy sugar cake and stuff your face with it until your body is screaming for a reprieve? In an attempt to transport yourself back to Harlem, back to the lights and cacophony of sounds in the Rumpus Room, should you buy a speaker and blast Hey Ya until you’re a crumpled heap on the floor of your room? Until “my baby don’t mess around” becomes the only sentence you can utter coherently?

Do you worry that you’ll never get that smile back?

Sometimes.