We met when your best friend was in love with me.
You joked that you were falling in love with me, too.
I laughed.
Eventually, I fell back.
And we fell together, deeper and deeper into something we never did figure out.
Now, I am here wondering
when I will be able to stop wondering when you will come running,
arms open, to tell me
"It's you! It's always been you."
And I will laugh that it's always been you, too.
Except I won't be joking.
I wrote about the frozen water on the bay that last winter to convince myself
that you are not
the only thing
I write about,
and you're not really.
I just don't think the ice will melt unless you burn it with me this spring.
And sometimes I wake up empty
and wonder at what point in the night you got up and left,
the same way I used to.
And then I remember how long it's really been.
And I remain empty.
Some nights I don't sleep at all.
I wait for the sky to change.
I name the mornings after the times I missed you most
and the stars after the nights you decided to stay.
You always told me naming a part of the sky was foolish until I named one after you.
I take advantage of the catalysts.
I test how high I can stay and for how long.
There is so much happening in my mind that it's taken over my body.
And I am involuntarily running in circles.
My body must think that if it keeps moving,
it will eventually run into you.
I haven't eaten in days
because I can't find an appetite for anything but the way you tasted.
And avoiding "reality" is ironically easier when I'm awake for days,
Because I don't have to wake up to the sharp reminder that you're gone.
And that I miss you.
It's just a constant dull ache.
Missing you is driving all night to watch the sun come up but being too busy collecting sea shells you might have liked on the beach to look at the sky.
Missing you is wishing I had the guts to jump.
Every night it all comes down to missing you from the bottom of a bottle,
or the passenger seat of a strange boys car.
And every time I end up on a busy road,
I wonder how many other passengers are missing someone.
I wonder if before I learned to miss you,
people of the past could have ever imagined
that someone like you would buy an old snapshot of their child on a rocking horse from an antique shop,
in search of an imagined, falsified nostalgia.
And I wonder if the brain takes snapshots of what should be nostalgic,
thus leading to the invention of imagined memories.
When my most treasured memories are those imagined, how will I tell the difference?
The mornings we watched turn to light together (we never did),
The nights we spent without arguing (they never happened),
The time you told me you appreciated the way I saw the world (you never even opened your eyes).
And you used to tell me that searching for seashells and watching sunrises and collecting experiences that make me feel whole arent "real life".
And I'm dying to know what "real life" is because the one thing that is timeless is that the sun does rise.
And exists.
How much more real can we get?
But where's my credibility?
I believed in us.
And I was going to name this one after you, but I can't remember your name.