"I wish it didn't have to be this way"
even sounds too incomplete.
Perhaps things WOULD have been different,
if I were like a wandering spirit,
a butterfly who wilts every flower it lands on.
Maybe you WERE that wandering spirit,
the butterfly who wilted every flower it landed on.
Because it was both I who fluttered and wilted.
I have to get you out of my mind.
I have to end it, so the truth I may find.
I can't go on with this charade of lies,
this teasing dance of averted eyes.
I hope you won't hate me when I speak this truth,
for these will be the last words I hope I'll ever write about you.
I think of you, and the world turns to amber.
For some reason, your scent seems nearer,
wafting through open windows and doors,
across streets and highways and into my room.
The walls turn golden. Amber.
It drips from the ceiling and pools around my feet,
anchoring me in my stead.
I'm an insect trapped in the vivid colors of the sun,
the sun that shone too brightly across my days,
days that were filled with exaggerated memories,
memories that are now plastered on the wall,
where your golden amber stains it like a sin.
WAS it a sin?
To fantasize and dramatize,
as your eyes were the pins that deflated my guarded heart?
I've been living in lies for so long, to know the difference.
Time flies when one revels in daydreams,
and only my Freudian slips will keep score
of how many times the slightest graze of your hand sent earthquakes through my arms.
I think of you, and my hands start to itch.
The waltz that had been so memorized by these careful fingers
becomes a fierce tango for the upperhand,
and neither heart nor mind had intentions of stepping away.
These hands, tiny compared to yours,
took pen and danced across the empty page.
The world filled with color when your song took shape,
until I realized that the page was covered
in the red and blue splatters of every mismatched footstep,
in the black and purple splotches from every time I fell too hard,
in the yellow and green streaks of when I thought I broke through you.
The music was losing its melody,
its rhythm dying down
until all that is left is a beat,
a beat,
the beating of a heart.
Eventually, the beat was lost.
I think of you in the silence, as your amber covers me like a dream.
I think of you in my dream, knowing you would never do the same.
Even now, as I continue to think of you,
memories of your smile bubble up before my eyes,
your perfect features standing before me,
mirroring me,
taunting me,
drawing me closer,
and leaving me,
as I reach out for the slightest drop of reciprocation.
I'm afraid to count the times I wished things would have been different.
I'm afraid to count the fantasies that continue to haunt me,
even as I write these last words I hope I'll ever write about you.
I could never count all the times I think of you,
but I wish I never lost hope that you'd think of me too.
But I guess it's just me wishing on the stars.
(9.28.17)