I Cannot Fix You

"I'm kind of... broken," you told me, irises cast down. Your long fingers reached behind to the back of your neck, and I knew you were about to scratch at the little duck tail of hair there. You were predictably uncomfortable. 

.

Broken? I thought to myself. The cynical side of me wanted to roll my eyes. What, was this a damn John Greene book? Can we fit anymore cliches in your dialogue? 

Broken; I didn't like that word at all. Broken is a word that we use when we're grappling for an excuse.

Mom, the dish washer is broken. My phone was dead. I wrote that thank you card, I swear.

It's trite and overused. Do not tell me you are broken. You are meat and muscle and bone and you are not built like a wristwatch. Do not romanticize this sort of thing, as if your soulmate will pop up out of the ground like a honeydaisy and want to coddle you, swaddle you, and burp you. Do not overestimate me; I do not want to fix you, and I cannot fix you. 

Because as cliche as it is, broken people are attracted to broken people. We like to hunt for ourselves in others, to feel at home. There's that old Hemingway quote, too.

'We are all broken, that's how the light gets in.'

I cannot fix you, because I'm the same. 

.

I blinked. "Okay," I said.