"She is marked by the sun. That is how you will know her," she said; nodding as she said it, her hands together, palm to palm, in front of her. I could not question her confidence, even if I wanted to, which I didn't; it was that certainty in her eye, the resoluteness in her voice. It was truth. This, after all, was her gift. She was clairvoyant with a 98% accuracy rating to her name, and hundreds of affirmative reviews by fellow querists seeking guidance on their most intimate and troubling problems from Starchild, a total stranger. It is not as queer as it might sound. I can and would argue who better to get advisement from than a total stranger, one not weighed down by the knowledge of your vices, who by some divine endowment can see not only who you are, but who you have been, and with any luck, where you are going, bathed in the light of a generously forgiving universe.

I was pleased with the suggestion that my life partner to be was imprinted by the sun. I imagined tattoos of stars and planets having being inked myself with a celestial symbol. Looking back, I assumed the mark was by an artist's hand and not a heat rash or burn from too much solar exposure. While the mark on my future beloved was indeed a tattoo, drawn of her own hand, and applied by a modest artist; the mark she left upon me was akin to a burn. A cataclysmic inferno to be more precise.

After a moment of quiet, an intuitive pow wow with souls passed, Starchild continued.

We would be brought together in this lifetime, not to be confused with prior engagements centuries past; to realize unconditional love. This time, here and now, our connection was ordained for success, its foundation in cosmic peace. We both had come from tortured pasts, unrequited love, heartache, loss, and commitments of disappointment to downright despair were well known to each of us. From the ashes, we would rise. Our relationship, forged from fire, was a gift, heart and soul.

But what to do when you are given a handmade warrior's blade and your experience stopped at a well-worn butter knife? The instruments are useless in unskilled hands.

So too is unblemished resilient love when handled with the ignorance of those with dirt beneath their fingernails. It is said, and proven repeatedly, that the road of demise is paved with good intentions.

Was it love at first sight? No. But I enjoyed her immensely. I had often thought , in retrospect, we would have been best left as friends. This is not true. We could not have been anything other than lovers, then spouses. Ending as divorcees was also not unforeseen; undesirable, and its warnings dismissed by both sets of eyes, yes; but hope is a powerful umbrella of disregard, and ultimately we both wanted IT to work. So we pretended it would. That lent itself to the nearly five years of sparring, broken by intervals of brief but formidable love making in both the physical and formative forms. At times we were almost good, but that is about as useful as being almost attractive. Close but no cigar.

There were moments when I lay beside her, in the stillness of a blackout night, after the tree frogs stopped their chatter and before the morning birds sang, I could hear the steadiness of her breath and believed my future lie there, between the inhale and exhale, suspended forever in the peace in between. I believed she held me there, in that space, where her heart waited for what her brain knew was coming, as constant as life and death itself, the interminable next breath until no more existed. Til death do us part.

I loved her fully, completely; if not perfectly.

When you can no longer look forward, you look back; turning over stones, looking for clues and markers of that precise point, the actual moment, when it all went wrong. A moment, a single decision, a careless choice; these can all be redone. Reimagined. Reframed. Understanding the folly leads to learning and correction and ultimately, a sort of guarantee that things will never go the way of loss again. That is what I am searching for.

Only it's never one single moment. One decision. Its' a cascading series, a waterfall of micro traumas, caused by multiple missed opportunities of not hearing the right concern and not responding with the right measure of atonement.

I thought I heard. I thought I was listening.

The good bye came like a slap. There is no greater rebuke than to take one's love away.

"But things are getting better. Can't you see how things have changed?" I actually said this. I believed it. She did not. She couldn't see that I was changing. It was an inside job, for sure, but my emotional remodeling was to my understanding, profound, undeniable, and above all, apparent.

When I tell the story now, those sympathetic of me will share their observations, all meant to support and elevate, I'm sure; but never fail to cut me deeper. "Can't you see that as you got better, she got worse?"

I needed her love. I've craved her love. And then it was gone.

But I'm still here.

"You were changing," my friend said calmly over coffee, her eyes looking past me, careful not to scare me back behind my walls by looking in too closely. She knew me well. I appreciated how she wrapped my shortcomings in cotton. "You still are. But she was not. Your changing left her further behind. She blamed your son. She blamed your ex. She blamed your sister, but she never saw that you were not leaving her behind as much as she was standing still, unable to step forward. She blamed you for her inertness."

Indolence ruined my marriage.

How can that be? We were destined for each other. It was in the stars for Gods' sake. There were things we were meant to be, meant to do, meant to become. It came and left, my hands still holding the empty sack. I don't understand. I want answers. I want to feel better but most of all, I want to ask, when she looked at the universe that was held within her decorated deck of tarot, all those cups, and swords, what did Starchild see? Because I think she needs a new fucking set of cards.