Wednesday, September 30, 2009

All The Things That I Cannot Say

 

 

Dear ___ ….

 

I think about you sometimes. I know how that sounds, considering we see each other on almost a daily basis and we talk or email at least three or four times a day. But still, I think of you when you aren’t there. I think of you in the dead of night, when the moon has disappeared behind the clouds and the world is asleep in their beds, I think of you. I think of us and I let myself remember all those nights.

We weren’t really together, I know that, but it didn’t stop either of us from falling.  It was only a fling. That’s what we say to justify the intensity of our attraction. You liked me, I liked you, now we are friends. That’s what we tell ourselves anyway.

Sometimes, just before I fall asleep, a memory of you slips into bed with me and makes itself at home. It wraps itself around me and strokes my skin, teasing me until I’m yearning for your touch again. But I know it won’t come.

Last night it was the night you took me to ————–. I know you remember; it wasn’t that long ago. We walked slowly through the streets, long after the stores were closed, and you showed me all your favorite places. We went down to the water, saw the lights of another state just across the ocean and that’s when you held my hand. It was the smallest of gestures and it wasn’t the first time either, but it was the first time I let myself feel. We talked and laughed as we strolled through the streets. You picked me a flower and put it through the buttonhole in my jacket. You told me I was beautiful.

The drive home was something else entirely.

When you got back, you stayed all night. We touched and teased, kissing and giggling in the dark, trying not to wake up my roommates. We slept naked under the sheets, telling stories between bouts of sex.

When I came, you told me I was beautiful.

I remember the next day too: the softness of my body against the hard angles of yours; early morning sex and then coffee on the front porch. We spent that whole day together, laughing and talking; we talked about everything. That’s what I’ve always liked the most about you: that I could tell you anything and you would never, ever judge me for it.

That’s my favorite memory. It’s the one that comes around the most often.

Sometimes, in the middle of the day, I’m assaulted by memories of the first night you kissed me. It was a lot colder that night than I was prepared for. It was only my third night in this new town, but I already felt at home. It was the first night you really touched me; it was the first time you spent the night.  We were drunk that night, not that it mattered, but it loosened me up to do what I wanted to.  I didn’t know that you liked me until that night.  We were outside, the party raging on behind the closed door. You pulled me close, lost your hands in my hair, and the way you looked at me…

It was the most perfect, inspired, incredibly intense first kiss I had ever had.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. It’s not even close to what I wanted to say. I actually wanted to know, if you think of me.

Do I haunt you the way you haunt me? In the middle of the night, when your laying in bed with her, her head on your chest, do you wonder what I’m doing? Have you ever thought of me, when you make love to her? Did you ever stop to think how I would feel with you living right around the corner, sleeping in her bed? Did it ever cross your mind?

Do you ever wonder if the child I lost would have looked more like me, or like you?

 These are the things I needed to say to you. These are the questions I know I’ll never have answers to, because I am too damn afraid to ask you.

So we’ll be friends. Yeah, there it is, the dreaded word that sounds like a four letter word when I say it.  You tell me that once I get to know you better, I won’t want to be with you anymore. I think you just hope that will happen, because you know that you care about me too. Yesterday you told me that I was pretty. The look in your eyes when you said it told me something else.

It’s that look that tells me what you never will.

I wonder some days, if I’m right. You told me she was your only ‘what if?’ Now you’re mine. I wonder if I’ll ever be yours.

If you never answer any of these questions, I hope one day I can get up the nerve to ask you this: do you ever miss me, even when we’re standing right next to each other?

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