Berlin or bust: Berlin Voted: Best City for a Broken Heart 2008

Because everyone has time. Or they make it.

And they live very close by.

The breaking of the heart happened a week ago Wednesday. In my living room. He and I, on the green velour sofa. Cleo on the fuzzy rug, wholly unaware how suddenly my life had changed.

The door shut behind him. A thousand heart-shards at my feet. And I was barefoot. I promptly iPhoned everyone.

Dylan said: Where are you now what are you doing come meet me now I'm right around the corner.

My cousin said: Lunch, tomorrow!

Photographer K. said: Oh, Lilan, I'm so so sorry. Call me tonight!

The French waitress cried out: No!

That night, Germany played Turkey. Dylan saved me a seat at Bar Gagarin. We cheered Germany's win with boisterous Casey and another American whose name I don't recall. I ate a salad with salmon. As always. Afterward, Dylan came over. She and I, on the green velour sofa. It was already eleven.

I told her everything that had been said. In detail.

I showed her the swiveling, knotted threads of my mind. The bending and arcing of my thoughts -- Chinese acrobats in every position, from every angle. None made sense. My vertebrae ached.

Did I drive him away? I wanted to know. Am I the girl who bakes the cake on the second date, picks the white dress on the third? Was my love psycho?

No, said Dylan, resolute. You were NOT Crazy Girl.

Thursday, my cousin arrived at my door at 12:45. In her arms an exploding bouquet: fleshy peonies, small white stargazers. She hugged me hard. Tears in her eyes.

At Bar Gagarin, we downed hot borscht in the sun.

I've been thinking a lot about it, she said. She offered me her theories.

I took a cab to my holistic doctor's. The assistant hovered Chinese charcoal sticks above my navel. She stuck tiny burning cones beside my ankle bones. She placed her palms beneath my sacrum, my lumbar, my shoulder blades. She worked the spot between my eyebrows with her thumb-pads.

Do you want to stay here? she asked when she was done.

Yes, I peeped. All of me small and weepy. The room was smoky. The window wide open. Acupressure books lined the shelves. I lay on the table and let my mind spin.

An hour later, the doctor popped in. She knew of what had happened. She bent over me, cupped my chin. "I would have wished something so different for you." I began to cry. She said: "You are just right, Lilan, just right." Because she knew what I was searching for. The thing wrong in ME to give the story sense.

My photographer friend K texted me nightly, at midnight: I'm home now, still awake, if you need to talk.

The French waitress called every noon: How are you, Lilanchen? Are you okay?

Friday my new Serbo-Croation literary hot-stuff friend met me for dinner. Tofu in curried coconut. Her hair was yellow, her face a perfect Valentine. We spoke of energies, of psychoanalysis, of mourning the very men who'd seemed most right.

Sunday Philip came from Hannover. We sat in the too-hot sun at Salotto Coffee Bar. He offered his boy perspective.

Tuesday I lay in my bed for hours after waking. The grief was like a canyon, its walls too sharp to scale. The iPhone rang. It was the French Waitress.

What she said was so much less important than that she said it. Afterward, I could leave my mattress. I could wash my hair. I could walk to the Coffee Bar. I could act like a perfectly normal person on a Tuesday in July.

And I could even almost feel it.