I can’t help but wonder if you still have tucked away all the letters and the notes and the list of reasons why I loved you.
I wonder where you left the guitar strings that I gave you for your wrist
I thought I saw them in a picture of you,
the one with the girl.
I could be wrong.
I think about the things I wrote to you and wonder if you’ve ever looked at them again
And felt the warm singe of pain when you read the words that we meant
when we were naïve enough to think that we were different.
I wonder if I still cross your mind when you scoop ice cream
Because you know how I hate skimpy scoopers.
Or when you find a hair on your arm that's freakishly longer than the rest,
if you wish I was there to pull it out.
Sometimes I think of your mom
And I wonder if she kept my picture, the one she kept on the mantle right beside yours.
What did she do with my Christmas stocking?
I can’t help but wonder if it’s been passed on to your new girl
And I don’t know if they’ll watch West Side Story together,
If she’ll enjoy it the way I did.
I imagine you never thought twice
When you came across a hair still on your pillow, or the faintest of my scent
Or my bobby pins on your bedroom floor.
I remember finding the bobby pins and hair binders of other lovers
when I came back to you for the last time.
They were scattered across your carpet like cruel reminders of all the other heads
that lied in the bed that was always mine.
I wonder if she ever finds mine and feels the same.
Probably not.
I imagine you’ll reread that book someday,
The one I got you in high school when you went through your philosophical phase.
And I wonder if you’ll notice the inside cover where I wrote “I love you”.
I’d always thought there was something special about a book with an inscription.
I remember sitting there for a long while, trying to think of something heartfelt
to say to you,
But all I could manage was “I love you”.
Maybe that’s because I knew that anything else I felt for you would have an expiration date
And I’d wonder if you’d read it when I was gone, and those words wouldn’t be true anymore.
Or not to you.
But I think of you reading it now and it won’t seem silly because it will
always be true.
For both of us, I think.
I think about the time when I first moved to your big city
And I got lost in your neighborhood and I saw you from my car.
You were walking right towards me.
I drove away as fast as I could and I couldn’t breathe or talk or smile.
Did you see me too?
I looked in my rearview mirror, and you never looked back as I drove.
I wanted so badly for you to move away.
I can’t help but wonder if you wonder
About your drawings and your notes and the music you showed me and if I still listen to it.
I do.
If I still wear my black pants that made you go crazy
or if I refuse to listen to The Joker, despite my favorite song lyric of all time,
because it reminds me of the time on your uncle's dock
When we decided we needed a song but we were both too drunk to think of anything sentimental.
I wonder if you imagine a bittersweet feeling coming over me
when I hear the Bee Gees and think of you singing in your Elmo voice,
Or if i ever find myself recalling one of your "facts of the day" and wondering where I learned it.
******, I hope you wonder.