When I met you, I never intended on dancing for so long. Every year I’d think, “this is the last time I’ll ever see him”. And I would get all weepy and teary-eyed as we sent the boats out for the last time, partially dismembered and covered in old, ***** tarp. But sometimes, I swear, I swear, I’d feel some warped sense of
Relief.
Like I could finally send all my lust and desires off with you to another tomorrow, where I would not be. Every year was your last year. And every year I’d say, “this is the last time I’m ever gonna see you” and you’d say “don’t be ridiculous, we’re gonna see each other again.” And I, “How can you ever know for sure?” And you, “I just got a feeling”. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, it was much more poetic. You’re much more poetic. And I’d melt like play-doh in the sun when you’d look at me lazily with those sky, sky blue eyes. And wither at the thought of you leaving me forever, my sunshine warming my skin to reach and grow.
But then like the tide, you would always return.
And then it was back to those hot, hot summer days, sweating ***** and drug cocktails out of every pore imaginable. And in this state, being expected to attend to all the ridiculous tourists looking for a boat ride around the Public Garden. Yeah, can’t say pedaling a two-ton boat full of gossipy annoying foreigners is easy. But the work pays for my play, so it’s back to the old wooden dock once more. To your irritable character staining the dock Fridays through Sundays, as if your unbearable hangovers were my fault somehow. Bloodshot eyes behind those ridiculous J-Lo-esque bright green sunglasses you insisted on wearing. That is, until they broke and fell into the swampy glittering water. Which started another screaming match between us, ending in me pouring disgusting pond water into your open, snoring mouth. Yeah, it was mean, but someone had to let you know that you were being an *******. You threatened to throw me off the dock, you even pretended to try. But when you wrapped your cinnamon arms around me, the last thing I had on my mind was fear.
I can’t even count on my fingers and toes the number of fights we’ve had, the times I’ve made you desperately rip at your thick blonde hair to try and quench the fire I started deep in your belly. The times you’ve called me weak and naïve, stupid, childlike, to which I’d say you looked like an angry leprechaun. That one always hit you the hardest. But when we’d be up in each others’ faces bellowing and screaming, the energy passing between us was of such crushing force I could almost feel myself being ripped toward you, like a magnet to metal. I could feel myself becoming a part of you, or you a part of me, whether I liked it or not.
Between the fights and the hangovers and the thick ****** tension hanging in the air like smog, there were the “good days”. The Mondays, the Wednesdays, when the only thing tainting the air was the rich conversation shared between us. Some days we would talk for hours on end, about anything that crossed our minds. “What’s your favorite color?”, “You don’t really believe in the end of the world, do you?” and “How do you say ******* in Italian?”. You’d laugh at my silliness and I would bask in your happiness, drink it in like sweet nectar from a flower covered in thorns. And then your happiness would transform into my happiness, and I would skip all the way home singing. And so continues this delicate dance we began so long ago.
Three years.
Three years. The difference between you and I, and time past. Time I’ve spent watching you so carefully as you strut down the dock, muscles contracting and relaxing in rhythm with each deliberate step. I watch devoutly for the white of your teeth to greet the sun shining so brightly in the sky blue sky. Sky blue eyes. All mine, sometimes. This time. In my mind I am forever living in the moments we spent entwined together on the forest green bench at the end of the dock, soaking in the sunrays in a content exhaustion. I am living with your arms around me, you teasing my hair with tired fingertips. At night I can still see you swerving down Commonwealth Ave and nearly knocking me over with your drunken embrace, then simply placing your arm around my waist. It fit so well on the small of my back. The days when you would loop your arm through mine as we finally got out of work and we’d practically run out of the place, as if we were chasing the remaining day through downtown Boston. I always, always go back to the times you’d put your face so close to mine, as if we were living on a single breath between us. But I’d blush and shy away, embarrassed, ashamed for feeling anything at all.
These days, I find it hard to decipher what is me and what is you. It’s as if we have been dancing around each other for so long we have morphed into one body, moving and mesmerizing. Our time together is coming to an end, and minutes that once ticked by so slowly race through my fingertips, sand falling through the hourglass in an endless stream. Days fall off the calendar effortlessly in a final solemn countdown to graduation day. Every morning is one more morning without you, another moment wasted with you so far away. Every night is one more night swimming in my loneliness, choking on words I wish so badly to throw at you, so you can finally carry the crushing weight drowning me. Soon I will go looking to dive into the pools of your eyes and you will not be there. I know the day I walk on the dock alone is coming, too quickly. And to rip apart from you now might destroy me.
So time continues, and I continue. To watch, to wait, to covet. Three years and I’m still hanging on to nothing. When will you leave me and never come back?