I don't cry anymore.
Not since I cried for you.
Nothing seems quite worth it, since you left.
So I don't cry anymore.
Just on that one day...
that seems to roll around a little faster each time,
as the years continue to mount since the sky came crashing down.
The day the war ended,
and the white flags began to wave.
The day all the songs suddenly played out of tune.
When the phone call came,
that was mostly silence.
Just two people connected by the absence of speaking,
while we attempted to comprehend the news.
They had found you. You didn't make it.
So I cried.
But, your sleeve wasn't there to wipe my eyes on
anymore.  
And when the anger came,
you weren't there to say my name the way you always did,
when I was angry with you.
There were no more 2 am phone calls,
there wouldn't be any again.
And I didn't look at the passenger's seat of that red Subaru anymore,
because you wouldn't be there rolling your eyes
while you serenaded me with that one Dave Matthews's song...
The one you hated,
because you hated all of them,
but I had insisted that it was "our song" one night at 4am,
when I told you that it made me think of you, and us
and everything.
There would be no more arguments that always ended in "I love you"s,
there would be no more fighting for each other,
fighting to love each other,
fighting to figure out if we mattered to anyone other than each other.
So they laid you to rest on a rainy Saturday.
I didn't go.
I like to think you understood.
Because the war was over,
and I was tired,
and I never wanted to remember you like that.
I was a coward.
You deserved better than that.
I just sat in my apartment,
cried every single tear I had ever been destined to cry,
and I didn't cry anymore after that.

The boy with the crooked smile,
tells me that I have riot eyes.
That when he looks into them,
all he sees is the chaos and he just...
gets lost.
He says he can remember when he met me,
and my eyes were soft,
when they twinkled playfully in the Christmas lights,
that hung in my bedroom window,
while we laughed and danced,
and loved,
until the soft morning light lulled us to sleep.
"Do you remember that?"
he says.
And I look away,
unable to look at him.
Because I know the answer,
and he knows the answer.
He knows.
"Can you remember that?"
His voice more pleading, than asking.
And he looks at me,
like he's looking for who I used to be.
Looking for any sign that the girl he loved all those years ago,
is still breathing,
somewhere.
But there's just silence.
"What happened to you."
he says.
It isn't a question,
just a statement that he finally whispers under his breath
from across the bed
while we sit there,
drowning in the final dying remnants of who we used to be.

I think you like the idea of me.
Because I’m unexpected.
I’m not obligations or schedules,
staring down the barrel of 25 years
that have already been planned out.
I’m spur of the moment
“Wanna grab drinks?”
and blowing off other plans.
I’m heavy breaths in parking garages
accidental brushes in passing.
I’m windows that slowly fog up
in your front seat
while we whisper even though we’re alone.
I’m kisses pressed up against alley walls
because you couldn’t control yourself one more second..
Headlights bouncing between irises in stolen glances
“Tell me you want me.”
I want you.
You say I’m intoxicating...
You like the idea of that.

But I like you.

See to me,
you aren’t an idea.
You’re laughing out loud for the first time in a while.
You’re hands shaking while I drive to meet you
lighting one last Newport
to calm my nerves in the parking lot.  
You’re silent wishes that you’ll kiss me around the next corner,
and forgetting we’re in public
because all I can see is you.
You’re whispering while I kiss you softly
because you’ve left me speechless,
and I'm scared to speak too loudly,
for fear that you'll disappear.
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I can’t.
Because this is real for me.
You're real, to me.

So how much longer do I wait
to be real to you too?

I didn’t expect to see you.
I never expected to see you again
if we’re being honest.
Despite the habit I have developed of glancing
at the door when I'm in all your old favorite bars...
Even though I still order all your old favorite drinks,
since it's all I have left that tastes like you.
I didn’t expect anything.
Didn’t look for you in every old Lexus,
or glance at the exit signs that I knew would lead me
to your old house.even though you moved away
years ago,
I took the long ways home.
Just to be sure.
I respected the way we left it.
Tried to retain that image of you walking away.
The one where you don’t look back...
Because everyone knows that if you look back
It isn’t over.
And you didn’t.
So it was.
I respected that.
I never prepared myself for seeing you again.
I didn't think I needed to.
After all, I had buried you in my graveyard of lost loves
with that blank headstone.
Marked simply as “the one that got away”.
I think maybe that through all the years,
over the course of all the moments of forgetting you,
I had convinced myself that maybe I wouldn’t even recognize you,
anymore.
That felt safe.
So I lived on
And you loved on.

So when you walked through the door
That I wasn’t glancing at for the first time in a while,
I don’t think I thought you were real.
Lost myself somewhere between being mistaken
And seeing a ghost...
But, there you were,
staring at me,
staring at you,
attempting to figure out where we would go from there.
There we were.
Almost like a dream,
the music faded,
the crowd thinned,
and I watched you,
trying to decide what to say.
And my heart was pounding in my chest,
and my hands were shaking,
while you got closer.
As you did,
the scent of that same cologne you used to wear suddenly flooded over me.
Drowning me in the images of lying naked next to you,
your hands tracing the words written into my ribs,
the only one I’d only ever explained to you...
All I could see was us.
The war that we had loved through flashing before me,
as you stepped closer through the crowd...
still unsure of what to say.

Time stood still.
Until I watched you change your mind.
With the saddest eyes, I had ever seen you have,
You just turned away.

The crowd filled in.
The music returned.
And I stood there hollow.
Unable to breathe,
as the room suddenly became stifling.
The air too thick to breathe,
my drink too strong,
I ran.
Ran like some depressing cinematic vision into the now pouring rain,
down the street to the closest corner awning,
to light my last cigarette,
I just stood there...
shaking...
Crouched on the ground in six-inch heels,
with my head in my hands.
Fighting the tears and the *****,
and the suffocating panic.
I waited for it to be over.
And after what seemed like a lifetime,
when the shaking had slowed,
I slowly stood...

And there you were.

Standing there.
Looking at me, looking at you.
Still unsure of what the right words should be,
after all the years of trying to forget each other,
we just,
stood there.
My eyes met yours.
You didn’t say anything.
Just stepped closer
soaking wet,
putting your hand to my face,
wiping your thumb across the tears on my cheek,
like you had in that hotel room,
that one time,
until finally,
“Hey.”

We said,
we wouldn’t turn nothing
into something.
Said we’d refrain
from “what ifs” and
“maybes”.
We agreed that nothing
could never become something
because it didn’t make sense
didn’t fit into the ideas
or the plans,
of who we were and what our lives looked like.
It didn’t “line up”,
how you felt,
how hard I fought it.
It just didn’t make sense.
Nothing couldn’t become something,
we said.
So, we were so careful not to be honest.
Made so sure we treaded lightly.
Tried so hard to lie whitely.
We planned our lives around nothing.
But we never prepared ourselves for what we would do
if nothing suddenly became...


everything.

He says,
"I don't know what to do with this. What is wrong with us.."
And I stare at the text like I'm waiting for it to disappear.
Waiting for it to be unsaid.
Don't say it.
Please.. just..
don't say it.
Give us five more minutes.
Five more minutes to feel it.

Then we won’t.
Because then I'll say,
"I know.. I'm not sure.. we don't have to do anything with it."
Because what I want to say,
isn't what you want to hear,
I know that,
and I can feel you waiting for me on the other end,
maybe sitting at a red light,
or glancing down briefly while you merge onto 84..
waiting to see if I go there.
Don't worry,
I won't.
You don't want that.
So, I'll respect that..
I say,
"We don't have to do anything about it.
We don't have to do anything.. at all."
The disappointment is palpable,
even through the air waves that carry those fateful words.
Because then you respond with,
"Good, yeah. Let's keep it uncomplicated."
And I tell you that's fine.
Of course it's fine.
Because that first text didn't disappear.
It wasn't left unsaid.
So here we are,
agreeing to be something we're not.
Agreeing to ignore something we are.
So it goes.

I think he may be right,
the boy that calls once a year,
five years too late.
I think he's right.
About fighting to love
and be loved,
only to be remembered
by that unheard voicemail,
that “missed call” notification.
Those photographs we didn’t keep,
and the stories we stopped telling
long before it was their time to be forgotten.
It shouldn’t be fair,
the forcible forgetting of the nights
they spent asking me to try harder
begging me to love them just a little bit more..
It shouldn’t be fair,
that I was so quick to say no
so quick to shut down
so quick to refuse such simple requests.
It shouldn’t be fair..
But they should be honored,
all the boys that exist now,
only as black and white adjectives
in simplified prose.
Penned only during the loneliest hours
when the world is dark
and the nightmares are calling.
It should be an honor,
being buried in the worn pages of
these Moleskin graveyards..  
After all,
poems are where all great love stories go to die.