Unrequited

Teardrops on My Guitar-Taylor Swift

Teardrops on My Guitar-Taylor Swift (2)

HE SAID HE’S SO IN LOVE. HE’S FINALLY GOT IT RIGHT. I WONDER IF HE KNOWS HE’S ALL I THINK ABOUT AT NIGHT.

Wanting to stuff myself with boxes of chocolate [×]

Crying to sleep [×]

Wishing I didn’t hook him up with her [×]

Praying the scar would heal [×]

Hoping that I would move on soon [×]

I wanted to uncurl myself from the ball I am right now but I couldn’t. I feel like I would explode if I did. I started watching Made of Honour when I gave up sleep and wondered how a man can be so blind.

Did he have to lose her first to know her worth?

“No.” I said to myself and hugged my knees. I turned it off when the credits started rolling in and I stared at my list of band names. I crumpled it and threw it out the window.

Staring at the ceiling for half an hour [×]

Blank and empty mind [×]

Groaning inwardly constantly [×]

I sighed wrote his name and my name and encircled our initials but nothing won’t fit.

Then I put on my iPod and let the shuffle take me somewhere—some song—productive. It started playing A Thousand Miles and I felt the keys under my fingers figuratively. The song ended and switched to A Thousand Years and I looked at the album.

I forgot that this was from Breaking Dawn.

I wrote down the lyrics of the previous song and searched Vanessa Carlton’s album. Then I did the same to Christina Perri’s hit and soon enough a good name twisted in my tongue.

Mile Breaking—M for Matt and B for Beatrice

It’s genius! I grinned to myself and lay down on my bed as I hugged my pillow, repeating the name I just thought of over and over. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

-

It was Friday so I could leave school early. But when the bell rang for dismissal, I retreated to the bleachers in the field instead. I had my notebook and two black pens which I constantly tap on the seat as I think of other names if ever Mile Breaking would be turned down.

I sighed and looked out to the greenery.

Then the strangest thing happened; I wrote down words, more like lyrics, and began singing.

I hadn’t been singing since I was seven. Dad just met an accident that year that made me stop because he stopped. I closed shut the notebook and as the sound echoed exaggeratingly across the open space, certain memories of the weeks before flashed before me.

He looked across the crowded room but he didn’t see me. He saw her. He made her laugh and talked about her constantly. He cried when she gave up. He forgot he was with me. He forgot that day—when all the while, he’s the one to always remind me. He said so many things I thought were true before it happened. She smiled at him. He smiled at her. I cried one night, I remember. I—

“B,”

I looked up and wiped away the tears I didn’t know where there. Matt stood over me and offered a small smile together with red and blue handkerchief.

“C’mon,” he says. “Let me show you something.”

-

“Don’t open yet,” he groans when I tried to pull his hands away. We’d been walking for what seemed like days and I tried to be really patient but I was worried he had done something that would worry me. He was breathing loudly near my ear and heard him whisper ‘alright’ and he took his hands off my eyes.