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.”