More Than Perfect (Plus-que-parfait)

“Your heart knows how to kill things before they kill you,” the man at the bar told me.  Or was it love?  Maybe it wasn’t things, maybe it was “Your heart knows how to kill love before it kills you.”  But then it is a matter of diction.  Does your heart kill love before your heart kills you or before love kills you? 

I was onto my third martini of the Wednesday evening and this man was onto me.  I was drinking because, if I didn’t, I felt like I would drown.  He asked me if I had read Dry by Augusten Burroughs.  I had not. This was a professor of film at the same university I was getting my MFA from.  We were sitting side by side at Bar 6, a French bistro style bar with low lighting that was tinted a dark red – like hell or a West Village happy hour.

This was Before.  Two days Before.  And I knew he was right but I wish I would have known.  How things can split in two. Like time – Before and After.  (Or was it love?) How things die.  How the heart can stop.  How I would wake up Saturday morning and walk to a church courtyard because it felt like the right place to cry.  How love dies because, if it didn’t, we would.

How, After, you would say – almost cry – “ I can’t go on if he does.”  And again it would be a matter of diction.  Go on.   You couldn’t live if he did?  Or you couldn’t continue to love me?

And what about unconditional love?  In French the conditional verb tense is actually called a verb mood.  Are you no longer in the mood?

And what killed the mood?  Was it seeing the vials of my blood on the table in the emergency room?  Was it watching me stand naked while the nurse photographed my bruises?  Was it in the way I saw your eyes turn red and wet and heard your voice crack as you reminded her about bruises on my hips?

“Your heart knows how to kill things before they kill you.”  Or was it love?

After, you said, “You’re MY girl.”  And what you meant was that someone stole something that belonged to you.  Something.  (Or was it love?)  Was it that he hurt me or was it that he killed the mood?

After, you held my hand on the taxi ride to the police precinct.  You didn’t hold my hand on the way back. 

Love dies because, if it didn’t, we would.

After, you said you needed us to be done.  You said you couldn’t go on.  And I couldn’t argue this time because what he stole from you, he stole from me too: Me.  I no longer felt I had my own legs to stand on. 

After, you said we were perfect but that you weren’t sure there wasn’t something more perfect.  (Or was it love?)  But imperfect is just a verb tense.  It’s tense, but you can choose a different one.

You’ll choose a different one. 

“Your heart knows how to kill things before they kill you.”  Or was it love?

It was love.

Past perfect* (verb tense).  In French: Plus-que-parfairt.  (Literally: more than perfect)

*The French plus-que-parfait (past perfect) is used to indicate an action in the past that occurred before another action.