Perfect/Broken
Inspired by "Tonight I Can Write" by Pablo Neruda, translated by W.S. Merwin
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
He saw the announcement in the paper. Yes, he still read the local paper—to remember. To remember everything that had happened in Neptune, even though he knew he'd never really forget. Veronica Mars was getting married.
Shit. He always knew this day would come.
Write,
for example, 'The night is starry
and
the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
Memory: There had been perfect moments between them. Moments when it was just Logan and Veronica, quiet and alone and together. Their problems, their broken-ness, their private anguishes and hurts, melted away in these moments. They'd seen many perfect sunsets give way to perfect starry nights that made them contemplate what it all meant: them, the past, the future, life, everything.
They could never figure it out, but knew that together, it was right. Whatever "it" was.
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Even after she left, Logan could sometimes still feel her there, as if she was waiting for him in the next room. He'd hear the wind outside and swear it was her laughing at something smart he'd said. God, he'd loved it when he made her laugh.
Sometimes he'd catch her when she thought she was alone, and she'd be singing—usually some old song or another. He'd just stand as quietly as possible in the doorway, until she felt him there. She'd turn around and see him, watching her, taking her in, and she'd laugh then too.
He might have loved that even more.
Tonight
I can write the saddest lines.
I
loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
They fought. About Logan's future plans. About moving. About staying. About living together or living apart. She could be vicious sometimes, looking at him and suddenly shutting off. Erecting her wall.
Once it was about his unwillingness to contact Trina. He said all she wanted was money or a place to say. She said Trina was his family and Logan should give her all he could. "She's all you've got left," Veronica had said.
But Veronica didn't get it. Family had never been the people who shared his DNA. To him, family was different: Veronica, Keith, and Dick. These broken people were all he had left. He fit with them because he, too, was broken.
He could never explain it to her because he felt it too much. Too deeply. Like his love for her.
He wanted her to understand him; he'd do anything: he'd give his life for her, or Keith, or Dick. They mattered. No one else did. Not even him.
She should have known some things were just too hard to say; that putting them out into the universe somehow made them true and made him vulnerable. It's why she'd never say how much she loved him.
If
he lost his makeshift family, he'd waste away. Through
nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I
kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
Memory: the first night in their place. Theirs. The one they picked out together. Their "bed" was just a mattress on the floor, next to the beautiful French doors Veronica insisted on, in front of the ocean-view Logan needed. They made love, and kissed, and held each other all night, with the moon shining brilliantly through the windows of the doors Veronica loved.
At
some point, Logan woke up, instinctively wrapped his arms around
Veronica, and opened his eyes. The moon fell on her; she looked so
perfect it almost hurt. She was the way he'd always seen her: his
perfect, broken Veronica. He wanted it to be like that forever.She
loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How
could one not have loved her great still eyes.
She held him. He couldn't even count how many time. At Lilly's funeral, in the hallway where no one would see them. In the lobby of the Neptune Grand, when he realized his mother was gone. When he'd come to her door, broken and bleeding and framed for murder. At his father's funeral, although that time it wasn't due to grief; it was in relief. When his first restaurant failed. When his second one didn't.
She'd
hold him, and look at him, and he was alright again. He looked in
her eyes, and knew she loved him. Sometimes, it was just that
simple.Tonight
I can write the saddest lines.
To
think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
She was getting married. He knew this wasn't the end for them, could never be, but it sure felt like it.
He
had to let her go. To
hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And
the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
The world was bigger without Veronica Mars in his life. He met people. He threw himself into his restaurant, into his life without her. He found it surprisingly easy to pretend; after all, his father had been an actor, and Logan had, on some level, been pretending his whole life.
It
was only at night, when he was alone in the house they'd shared,
that he felt the deficiency she'd left in his life. He'd had
many empty spots in his life before she Veronica, but together they
had tried to fix them. This was a hole she's left all on her own,
a deficiency she'd created. It was the exact shape of her
eyes.What
does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The
night is starry and she is not with me.
He had a picture of them. Only one. He couldn't bear to throw it out once she left. It seemed he should have something solid, something other than memories, to remind him of their time together. They'd both invested a lot. Maybe too much.
He looked at the picture sometimes, and felt the not-here-ness of her. Wondered why no matter how much he loved her, it didn't seem to be enough.
Sometimes he found himself thinking, 'She'd love the sky tonight.' And he knew that somewhere, she was looking at it too.
This
is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My
soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
He knew he had to let her go. He gave himself a set time: six months. Six months and then no more Veronica. It was easy to say, to pretend. Dick helped. Incorrigible Dick. It was a good thing they were business partners as well as best friends. Dick was on constant watch for Logan's next…relationship. Dick's choice of words had been much more colorful. On an "off" week, Dick tried to "hook a brother up" twice a week. If Dick was on his game, there were no less than four girls in a week. It was fun, at least.
Veronica
faded slowly, as memories tend to do. Yet, since she left, some
small part of him had always felt like something was missing. He
convinced himself he was just horny. My
sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My
heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
Memory: he loved exploring her body. Memorizing it. Knowing the shape and layout of her stomach, her back. His favorite was her waist; he could kiss it and brush it with his fingertips for hours. Sometimes, she's let him. She became familiar to him, as familiar as his own body. He could still recall every mole, every scar. At night, when they slept, they fit together perfectly.
In their bed alone, he felt her absence so deeply it actually hurt somewhere deep in his chest. Sometimes he'd forget she was gone, and roll over searching for her. She was not there.
Sometimes,
for no reason, he'd think he saw her somewhere, at the store, on
the street, but just when he began to get excited because she was
finally here, she'd be gone. The
same night whitening the same trees.
We,
of that time, are no longer the same.
Memory: one night, she turned the tables and studied him. The tiny scars left by his father. The scar from the time he'd fallen from his bike onto a piece of broken glass. The chicken pock on his stomach from when he couldn't stop scratching. She touched each one lightly with her fingertips, then brushed them with her lips. The scars revealed the Logan she knew—broken and damaged, but still trying to make something of the pieces.
'We are broken people,' she thought, 'but somehow this works.'
But,
she thought, once they'd fixed each other, there was nothing left.
I
no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My
voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
As he'd promised, once he reached the 'six months without Veronica mark,' he met a beautiful restaurant critic and asked her out. She was tall and leggy, with long dark hair. She was virtually issue-free. This was new. The Anti-Veronica. Her name was Elizabeth, but to her friends and family, she went by Betty.
Logan loved the irony of it.
She was perfect in all aspects but one—she was not Veronica. This was okay at first, until he realized that every time he woke up next to Liza (his name for her), he still, for the briefest of seconds, believed she was Veronica. The differences between them, Liza and Veronica, were glaring. Liza was perfect. Veronica was not.
But then again, neither was he. God, he'd really fucking loved her. Hadn't that always been the problem?
Another's.
She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her
voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
Although he didn't want to, Logan Googled Veronica's beau. Turned out, Theodore Fenstead was Duncan Kane Revisited: heir to a virtual kingdom of revenue, safe, reliable and perfect in every way. Theodore, or "Teddy" as Logan was sure his frat brothers called him, was the 'he-version' of Liza. It was all so… nostalgic.
Logan began to realize there was too much perfection in his life. Everything was going well: Liza, his restaurant, the rebuilding of his social circle. Everything was as it should be. Except, of course, for the whole Veronica-getting-married ordeal. He needed the disturbance to make him feel alive. She must have known he'd see the announcement…
Jesus, why couldn't he just let her be? Why did he have to obsess over this guy? Teddy. Fuckin' Teddy. What kind of asshole name is that, anyway? Let him have her. Let him deal with her constant need to be right, her nosiness, her complete inability to relax, except when he was touching her right there, and she'd make that sound, and he knew she was finally present, in the moment, with him… Let Teddy have her too-long showers, her trust issues, her walls, her work addiction, her perfect smile and her knowing eyes. Her perfect kisses. And her smell, her uniquely Veronica smell.
The though of someone else smelling her…kissing her…finding comfort in her eyes. It was almost too much.
He
called Liza. I
no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love
is so short, forgetting is so long.
How long had Logan and Veronica been together? Too long. Not long enough. How often had they fought? Too much. Maybe too little. And they made up… well, that had always been perfect. The longer they were apart, the more gilded his memories became, as they tend to do. Eventually, all that was left was the shell of the love he'd once felt for her, but he knew, with very little prompting, he could feel it again.
Some days, he was in love with life and Liza; but those days became fewer and fewer. Then he saw the wedding announcement, and he knew what Veronica wanted him to do.
Why was it impossible for him to forget her?
Because
through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my
soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
He'd held her too. The night she thought her father had died. That night was foremost in his mind. It was the first time, ever, Veronica admitted she somehow needed him. Before that, she'd never been invested in their relationship as he was. He wanted to give Veronica the world if he could, like some modern Jimmy Stewart telling her he'd pull down the moon if she asked. She'd always been…detached. He used to think he could crack her shell, and sometimes he did, but mostly, she stayed the same. She'd seen too much in her short life and needed to build walls to hide behind. It was the only way she could exist.
He'd
seen a lot too, but he still felt love could save him. That he could
be saved. That was the difference between them. Though
this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and
these the last verses that I write for her.
Logan sent her a copy of "Tonight I Write," a poem he'd found somehow, somewhere. He couldn't really remember. It didn't matter, he guessed. Call it fate, if you want. Whatever. He sent it, and knew what would happen.
Two years later, Veronica's marriage ended.