My dearest, sweetest, most missed Sara

Please, dear, come back and mend this heart so broken of mine; replace its pieces where they once sat so soundly, beating so perfectly in union with your own; organs entwined, one. Come back and retrieve this Dear John, this parting gift of ten torch songs too many; songs that I never dreamed I’d hear, although I feared it increasingly as our fleeting stolen moments grew less frequent.

“You’re wasting all your time here.” That’s what you said to me, that first time our paths so accidentally crossed; a whim led to so much more, to something like love, perhaps. I knew I wasted time that could have been better spent exchanging so much more than glances, and I stand by it: I would happily while away a day with you – two, three, as many as it takes – again, in a heartbeat, if only my heart would beat as it did then. Alongside yours, for however much of your time you afforded me; this is your time now, mine was always distracted. On the bus, a break from the mind-numbing nine-to-five grind, during a five-minute stroll to buy milk for her cereal. Yes, I know I’ve not been wholly faithful, but you must understand: neither were you. “Don’t think of what we can’t be,” you told me so soon, going back to him, your Dustin; to his piano so in mourning whenever you stepped from its side to seduce me with a voice so divine. I can’t listen to it so much now; I needn’t bother, such is the indelible imprint it left on me, somewhere inside causing a hurt, a cancer that no doctor knows a cure for.

I remember, too, the moment you uttered that perfect something, words I wish I could clasp tight inside a locket: “It’s you that makes me try.” You didn’t need to say anything else – you could have held your peace for as long as you wished – but wherever there is sweetness, sourness so often follows. You had him talk to me, to set me straight, but even he slipped. “She wants nothing, but to wake and find you there.” Those were his words, ones I almost wish I’d never been privy to. I’d already become consumed by my own guilt – dalliances with Chan, Isobel, her – so they were only blades with which your parting sliced deeper, with which your absence continues to seem so enormous, your silence so overpowering. He tried again, later: “You were born with a heart that can never be filled.” Not now, perhaps; not ever, probably.

If I could go back I’d do things differently: commit from the outset, see those others for what they were. Yes, I have a fondness for them that’s unlikely to dissipate even after I put this pen to rest, but it’s to you what’s left of this shattered heart belongs. Your parting words burn the very brightest, spread like strip lights across the insides of my eyes, clawing like beasts at my stomach, churning the butterflies that once fluttered so freely there without embarrassment, without a care. “When love starts up, you can’t escape.” So perhaps that’s why you did; perhaps running was all you knew. I know, though, that even at the end, the penultimate act, you had your doubts, each of them growing more powerful with each minute that we spent together. “Let’s just stay here,” I remember. “You should love me here. I should love you, dear.”

You should. You must. Come back, dearest, do – this body is but a hollow shell, a mannequin with its strings so desperately slack, without the spirit you stir so wonderfully within it. “If you can’t find love, then you will finally see how we kill ourselves slowly.” Those were some of his final words, and perhaps his perspective was one we should have looked to sooner. None truer were spoken by either of us, any one of us three, then or now. I’ll weep, you know, but only for so long – once these ducts run dry over what’s been, and moreover what’s gone, they’ll never moisten again. They, too, will have no further purpose in furthering their fruitless cause, in pursuing further pain best left unbothered. Because when your presence is not felt, often that’s all that’s here: a dull throb, a pestering pain in need of a soothing hand, your gentle persuasion. Your sweetness is immeasurable, your touch silken, your sigh a siren’s call to a smiling watery death. Whisper once more in my ear and I’ll promise I’ll be by your side ‘til our makers take us both. Until this heart is mended, I’ll yearn for such a merciful fade to black.

All my love dearest, which for what it’s worth is exactly that.

Or: the brilliantly elegant third album from Italy-based duo Sara Lov and Dustin O’Halloran, recorded in their former home turf of Los Angeles.