unfinished snippets

remember me?

You don't know how to feel about me.

I get it, no one ever does. I'm too pretty to be just a guy's friend, but never pretty enough to be anything more.

And we're good together. You know that. That's the problem.

You keep thinking back to the moment when you first noticed me, looking up through weary eyes and blurry vision at a nervous girl with curly hair who could hardly stand being around you. It was almost too much, at the time.

Sometimes I think back to that moment too. I wasn't thinking really, just acting. Trying to care less about what other people thought about me. Trying to forget someone else from my past. You were a nice dream at first, something to think about while chewing on the end of a pencil and tapping the empty pages of my sketchbook, but then you became something else. In that moment you were all too real. I could actually look in your eyes and see someone looking back at me.

You went about the rest of your day like normal, floating through conversations and pretending to listen to girls who wanted to get your attention, but something didn't feel right. You started to notice that wherever you were, I was too. I was fifty feet away from you and your pretend friends laughing about something stupid. I was across a couple of tables while you read a book under the shade of a pine tree. Wherever you were, I was there too.

Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe not.

Moments came and went and so did I. Just as suddenly as I had appeared, I was gone, off to new adventures and new people. But I didn't slip your mind, did I? You wondered who I was, and if you would ever see me again.

And then there I was.

Perhaps I think about that day more than you do. Perhaps all of our moments more than you do. But I know you're just as confused as I am, and maybe you replay those memories over and over, trying to remember where it was that I came from, and how you had never noticed me before. And they come flooding back, the snippets in time when we were together. A breeze-by while going our separate ways. A shared friend mentioning one of our names to the other.

When you think of them you feel guilty, confused, wistful.

If only I hadn't been shy. If only I'd let myself be embarrassed. If only you were more awake, less scared. If only, if only.

Now you can't bear to think of the "if onlys." You won't let yourself.

And me? It hurts too much to entertain the hypothetical past. I can feel myself cutting into my own heart with every fleeting thought of you, with every memory I dig up just because I miss you.

I should stop. Delete the pictures and the videos, erase anything that ever tied me to you in the first place, but I can't. In fact I find myself clinging tighter to them with every unread text and ignored "how are you?" I cling to the vivid memory of your laugh and cheesy giggle, the way your hands felt on mine, the feeling of your eyes on me. I think about the way you looked at me while I was dancing, the rush I got when I opened my eyes and saw you. You... confused but... in wonderment.

Finally we say more than four words to each other. It's like flood gates opening; everything rushes out at once and fuck, you're so anxious. You're so anxious, and I'm terrified. You say you're shaking, that you're not sure why you feel unmotivated and unhappy. You say you think you're depressed. I see the words light up on my screen and before I even have time to process them there are tears in my eyes.

Here I am, blaming you for everything, when I should've just said, "I'm here. I'm here."

And all I want is for you to be happy. All I wish for you in this lifetime is happiness and contentment and closeness with God, but I have been blaming you for ignoring me all these weeks thinking it was just you being stupid when in reality it was something else all together.

I still wish you'd share things with me like we did before, but maybe that time wasn't as amazing as I let myself believe. We were little kids, I think, or at least I was. You, you were young and innocent. Less indifferent than you are now. Life has never ceased to attempt to ruin you, and I can see you trying to fight it, but the ever-relenting cynicism has started to take hold of you.

I know you see the light slipping away from his eyes. The words that he's trying to say that won't come out.

"Let me go. Just let me go." And you're screaming because how can life be so unfair? It's not supposed to end like this, is it? We're supposed to be young and free and beautiful and healthy. Not on our deathbeds.

The existentialism has made its mark on your heart, and you now forever carry the weight of it with you.

He says he's ready for death. You don't believe him, but all you can do is hold his hand and hope that he knows how much love surrounds him.

You're shaking. You always have been, haven't you? It's dark and the house is filled with sleeping children and mothers who have cried themselves to sleep, yet you're not one of them. You're inconceivably awake, and sleep seems as far away as ever.

All you have is the whisper of my voice through text on a glowing screen, my words doing little to minimize your anxiety, but at least it's something. At least someone's there. At least someone's paying attention.

I wish I could be there for you. Give you a hug and tell you it's all gonna be ok, even though I don't know that it will be.

Do the lies sound agreeable to your ears? Is that what you wanted to hear? It's really all I've got at this point, so I just hope it's enough.

It seems impossible. Even though I'm hundreds of miles away from you, somehow you still feel my presence--hear my voice in your head as I tell you tentatively to calm down.

You've stopped shaking now.

For a second, everything seems ok.