I am so afraid that the longer I stay in one place the more people around me will come to know and understand me and the thought paralyzes me

Am I pushing them away because I can’t stomach that level of vulnerability or does it really take just a few quick months for people to learn to love and then get sick of me

I want to run away and start again but I’ve already done that twice and both times it’s taken less than a year to start to feel that way again

Is that empty weight in my chest really called loneliness and why is it that heavy and how long do I have to carry this around for
how far across the world do I need to drive and how long do I need to disappear to remind myself to stop packing these insecurities at the bottom of my suitcase when I go

remember the poem i always said
i'd write about that light
house well here it goes
ten months later
and certainly not as romantic as id
hoped

ok ok so
i'm the lighthouse
(of course, you should've predicted that one)
oh oh and
you're the boat thats never coming home
(of course i should've predicted that one)
some days its sunny and if i squint
reeeeal hard -
hand over my brow and thumb on my temple

i can see the shore!

other days the fog is so
thick
so grey
so heavy
i cant see the hands reaching out to hold me

but frankly, i'm not sure they're even there anymore

the sticky taste of metal,
lime,
cholula, and eventually
beer
hits my chapped lips as I hide a tender smile
watching you fight back tears and laugh at how silly you must be for it while talking about your past, thinking about your future,
how hard your dad was on you,
the internal war going on in your head telling you to make him proud by surrendering your own happiness.

your vulnerability pierced my HEART in that moment,
choked me up a little bit;
it's been a while since i've seen that level of sincerity in another person.
I wanted to freeze time and the people talking around us,
reach out a hand, and tell you:

you are safe to cry with me.

I tried to be strong for you when your mom died
We cried in the car in the driveway next door with all of the lights off
I held your hand up to my mouth and kissed it
We sat in silence and sobs for a long while before we were ready to go into my own moms house
I hug her tighter now
I wonder if you wish it were the other way around
I know I would find it hard not to

I see her in your stubbornness
Your silliness
Your vices
Your voice
Losing her is like losing a big part of you
Like losing a big part of myself

I wanted more years with her
But for now I’ll water her ivy and always wear patchouli and watch my mouth when I want to say “god ******” and maybe dance a little more in her honor and make grilled cheeses with mayonnaise instead of butter and sit outside on my porch more often and make sure you sweep up your crumbs that I know you are tired of hearing about

We can’t gang up on you anymore like you always claimed we did, I laughed every time you told me I acted like her in little ways, I just liked being on her side
I liked her being on my side

I’ve never felt more special in my life than knowing and feeling her approval and love for me

I want to be the woman she saw in me. I want to prove her right, that she knew all along there was no one else out there for you, besides me,
for me, besides you.

I know in my heart that there was not a more special woman in this world.
I wanted more years with you.

it feels like for a brief moment, we slipped into another dimension in which that was our life, a parallel world existing simultaneously as the one we are currently living here

we were those people and we are also these people which I guess means that we are so many different people living somewhere else right at this very moment

like the life I have here and the person I am here is just one beautiful version but now that I've peeked in through a window into this alternate life, it has swung open the door to a million other lives and avenues and dreams and desires

like some part of me is still there and hasn't made it back yet

like this isn't the me that's supposed to be here and the me that's there is the wrong one
maybe we are both mourning the other "right" life

like I should be sitting dizzy along the Boston harbor, a cool breeze and soft hazy light washing over me, my hands in my coat pockets and your head on my shoulder, a small smile at the corner of my lips, laughs loaded in the chamber, because everything feels so perfect that there is no way any other place in the world exists outside of that moment

and she should be sitting here, along the bay, watching the red sun set over the gulf, listening to the familiar song of the water lapping the rocks below, taking her ritual stroll of coming back into herself, and her home is quiet but not for long because she's counting down the minutes until the moment he walks in the door with open arms and an excited hello

both of these people exist but they can't together, and to accept one is to deny the other and neither feels fair or good or
right

and in that realization it is impossible to not think about all of the decisions that led to this life and not that one or any other one and how by chance, I ended up here but could have just as easily ended up anywhere else and that discovery is too big to settle into over a three hour flight and fourteen hundred miles because

somewhere I am sitting in a park in Rome, fingers sticky from eating peaches next to my best friend in the grass, and somewhere,

I am dancing on a frozen lake in Bar Harbor with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, and somewhere

I am back home, wandering the streets of the french quarter after a few glasses of red wine and a soft saxophone fills the silence in the distance and my parents are only an hour away and somewhere,

I am riding a bike through the cemetery as spring brings pink blossoms to the trees in Tallahassee and I never left

and I never met any of you

and these are the people that I always have been, always will be, never was, and never will be again