Every Dawn You Break My Heart

Every dawn starts the same. I set myself the same impossible task: make my wife fall in love with me before the night can undo it, before you wake having forgotten you were ever mine.

It was a curse that took your mind from you, three winters past.

That godforsaken witch.

You will not remember her. I will never forget her.

The woman who lived where the road forks past the old standing stones. By day, the village averted their gazes from her like sheepish children fearful of scorn, all the while paying her in eggs for a spell or a hex under the cover of darkness. You went to her for a charm, only a small thing the size of your palm. A blessing for the child we were so desperately trying for. All she asked for, was a lock of your hair and a memory, that would be hers to keep. You gave her the hair, a beautiful strand of deepest jet, a perfect, tightly wound spiral. And, against your better judgement, you lied about a memory out of fear.

She knew. The fae always know.

The curse that ensued ravished your body and mind relentlessly. So much so, that everyone who knew us called it a cruelty. Said it would be merciful of death to spare you. The fever only broke on the seventh night but by then, it was too late. It left you breathing and beautiful still, but empty. Your name was yours, but the rest of you faded each night until you no longer remembered your life. Our life, by the first light of dawn. The healer called it a mercy you lived, but he did not have to watch you flinch every day from the man in your bed, the stranger in your home. A danger you always perceive, come morning.

I want you to know, I have not been idle with my grief. I have stood at the fae market and offered them every memory I own of you if they would give you back your own. A one-sided love, they said, is poor coin, and they laughed me out into the dark. But that did not stop me. It will never stop me. I have bought charms that held you for an hour longer, blessed-water that bought us until midday before your eyes turned scared once again. Each cure costs more than the last and hands back less of you. There is not a great deal of me left to sell. I have tried everything I can think of. So, I have learned to love you in the brief span the darkness will grant me. Which is one day, from the first grey light to the last, and I do it because I love you. I would court you a thousand times over before I would lose you even once. That pain is too much to bear, my love.

The hardest part comes before you even open your eyes. I slip my ring off and pocket it, I turn our wedding portrait to the wall, so your own smiling face cannot accuse me. I gather the evidence of us, your comb, your letters, the worn grooves of a life shared, and put it where a newcomer would never think to look. Every dawn I unmake our marriage with my own two hands, and every dusk I beg it back. What a thing, to be so skilled at vanishing from my own home. I spend each dawn making myself into no one, so you might have the mercy of meeting me clean. Some mornings my hands are steady doing it. Those are the ones I struggle with the most.

When your eyes first open, I invent myself anew: as the friend of your sister down for the week, a safe haven and a protector. A well-wisher, offering a quiet helping hand. I keep my distance and I let you find me slowly, just like the way you found me the first time. At that dance, when we were nothing but kids. The music still plays in my mind whenever the house falls quiet, and I find myself humming the tune to you. It soothes you most days, though you have no idea why. Sometimes, when the tune catches you in the right mood, you let me take your hand and turn you slow across the kitchen floor, and for the length of one song we are exactly who we used to be. At least, in my mind.