Stop me if you've heard this one before.
Guy meets Girl.
Girl meets Guy.
And even though
They both know
That she's waaaaaay out of his league?
She still says, "Yeah, I'd love to go to dinner sometime."
And he asks, "With me?"
And that's how it starts.
That's the moment when their two hearts
Brush by each other so close
They can taste each other's nerves.
Maybe they go to dinner.
Maybe they don't.
Maybe they go sing karaoke
And go to theme parks
And sit down by the river on the floating dock
Bare inches above the chilly water.
Or maybe
Nothing happens.
Maybe the guy realizes that he's too lucky
And he doesn't know why
So he gets kinda shy,
And he does that thing that he does to all his relationships.
He lets it die.
He lets this one get away,
Like he has with so many others
When he's run out of words to say
That sound like what people these days want to hear.
He takes his true voice and smothers it
Beneath layers of what he thinks
Is appropriate.
Now, inside?
He's screaming,
His head thrown back to the moon,
Trying to convey words meaning something
Far more powerful than he could ever say
Out loud.
He wants to take her face in his hands and tell her,
"You remind me of those days, those days, those hazy days of summer,
When a gust yanks your kite's string from your hands
And takes your aerial octopus on a whirling waltz on the wind."
He wants to kiss her neck and whisper,
"When I met you, it reminded me of how it feels to be eating an ice-cream cone,
Then dropping your ice-cream on the hot pavement,
And you feel that the world is coming to an end,
But then
The ice-cream man hands you another cone.
This time with two scoops."
And he, for his part, would mean every word,
But so unlike the caged bird,
This little boy playing at being a man
Doesn't sing.
He lets those lines of poetry and prose
Sink back into him.
Unsaid. Unheard. Unfelt.
And the Girl, for her part, does nothing wrong.
She doesn't have any idea that his silent song
Even exists.
She just sees a guy,
Who is waaaaaay under her league,
Trying in vain to hold her interest.
So she gets bored,
And who can blame her?
And our guy?
He doesn't say a thing.
So this is for all the ones that got away.
For all the women that I have, in my day,
Let slide by me without hearing a thing that I wanted to say.
This is me saying, "I'm sorry."
This is me saying, "I wish I had said all those words to you.
That I hadn't been so damned shy,
But I didn't and I was, and this is why
I'm making a vow.
Right here. Right now.
To never let this happen again.
It's time to let my immortal mouth run rampant
So that when I meet the next Girl That Got Away,
I can say,
"Hey. I know that I'm an odd guy,
And you probably can't think of a good reason why
On earth you should ever even consider
The prospect of one friendly dinner
With me, but let me tell you...
I'm great in bed."
And then, when that doesn't work,
And she, understandably, calls me a jerk,
Then I can say,
"Wait. You misread my meaning.
I don't mean I'll leave you moaning.
Well.
I might.
But that's not my point.
My point is this:
In those moments between when you're awake,
And when you're dreaming,
I'll be right next to you, speaking
Softly as a butterfly's wings
All the things about you I love.
I'll be singing every one of your favorite songs,
And giving sound to your favorite flavor of ice cream.
I will send you off into your dream
Wrapped in a beautiful, bountiful, blanket of words,
And as the night closes in and curls around the both of us
Like a lost lover's arms,
I'll tell you all the things I wish I had said.
I'll tell you all the things I want to say
To you, The One That Didn't Get Away."