I spend the year redoing all the things, train rides in tiny tunnels, the museum, Bad Moms in the theater, the drink now with one straw instead of two, the restaurants, glow sticks in snow at night, redo too that concert, so that my first memory of these things are without him instead of with. I put the second copper mug in the garage and there comes a month when the door rings at 9:30 and I don’t still dumbly wish it’s him.

And come Christmas I’ll watch that movie again, the first one I’ll have watched in my living room in a year, come New Year’s raise a glass on the patio, toast to the moon, toast too the man who gave me things I did not want, wish him the peace I’m still looking for. Because I can redo all the movies, dance alone in the living room, drink coffee at an empty table, but I can’t undo all the parts of me I gave him, the way the silence ached when he left. There’s no do overs for hearts.

I’m told there’s an adaptive purpose to pain, that, if you let it, you can learn from it the same way a child learns what’s hot, learns to avoid the fire. What did I learn from him except how to love again someone like brother, like baby, like those other friends,  like that husband I’d already had to let go? But would I now not answer the door if he rang it? And would I undo it if I could, all the parts of me I gave him?

And what if the answer, if I’m telling the truth, still is no?

There’s no do over for hearts.