You greet me with a rather glittering smile, and I return it as you ask if you can sit adjacent to me. “Of course,” I say, as I still cannot get ahold of my heart throbbing at the speed of a bullet train by now. “Watching the rain fall?” you try to make conversation. “I am, yes. I was missing this place, so I decided to visit. What brings you here?”, I reply. “Me too actually, weird coincidence.”
We sit there for a few fleeting moments, in utter silence. I rely on you to continue further with the conversation because I seem to have finished my word limit in my thoughts today.
“You miss this?”, you say motioning your finger towards the ground, the rain, and the ambiance around us and without a breath, I say “dearly”.
“It’s really been long, hasn’t it? I think over seven months?”
“I believe so.”
“You really can stop with those one-word answers you know. I promise I won’t mind.”
I look at you with pain in my eyes. My pain mostly converts to anger soon after but today I don’t seem to have that energy. “Hmm. Yeah, sorry my bad, I’m just a little overwhelmed.”
“I know. Okay I have a confession to make, I knew you were coming so this could be more than a coincidence…” he says.
“Do you remember how we got close? That one time back in 10th grade when I mistakenly hurt you and we had that dreadful walk to the water cooler? I remember seeing your eyes full till the brim and my body losing its strength. I remember the next period was sports and I was sprinting here, right at this place, drowning in shame for making you feel that way. That was the day I realized there was more than friendship between us, at least for me.”
“Yeah. I didn’t cry though.” He laughed. Not a hearty laugh though. A ‘I really don’t know what else to do laugh’. Things like these snap me. When someone tries to hide their emotions when they obviously need to let them out takes a toll on me and yes this reaction did. Now I know I would be saying things I should not. But it’s too late.
“You know, I never thought there would be a day you won’t be mine to touch. It’s saddening. You’re not mine to crave anymore, not mine to dream of. And yet I dream of you every day. Every night. Every night I have you in my dreams, trying to get close, trying to get near. How did we reach here when we promised each other we won’t? When we made a pact we won’t. How did we reach here?”
“I don’t know what to…” he tries to say when I cut him mid-sentence.
“You used to be my Cornelia Street, my Say You Won’t Let Go, my Bonfire Heart, and my Paradise. Now, look at you being my Empty Space, my So Good, my Glimpse of Us, and my Wrecked. All of this when you simply could have stayed. I would have started riots for you, Ty, I would have elevated to the sky and burned like a star for a million years if you wanted me to. And for some sick hopeless reason, I believe you would have done that too. How do you not remember all those future letters we used to write to each other? What about the future at all? Look at us now. On the ground dark and grey like ashes of all the words, we used to say as if they ever meant anything. Did they Ty? Did they mean anything to you? Then how could you let me go Tyler?”
Poetry In My Veins 