Writing Our Story

My heart keeps telling me write our story.

But my head reminds me we have no story.

No real substance.

We have a beginning but there is no middle.

No rising action.

Just a beginning and an end.

An introduction of characters and then they bow out.

But in my heart there is the possibility for a story.

A story about how I didn't understand the girls who fawned over you.

And then about how you would give me hugs at strange times.

A story that pivoted on that night when you took pictures smiling lopsidedly in the low light of that apartment.

But instead of me walking home alone that night, angry because you weren't being honest with me, you'd call for me to wait up

And you’d tell me it wasn’t my fault that you had issues.

You’d bear just a little bit of that shattered heart of yours with me.

But then it would end.

End still the same.

With you dashing out without so much as a goodbye

But my heart says you meant to say goodbye.

You meant to give me one last hug

One last long stare into each other’s eyes.

That you just didn't have the strength to say it to me.

So you left it hanging in the air like the half deflated balloons when your birthday is a week past.

Yes my heart tells me to write this story.

And I could.

But you wouldn't read the story and see yourself.

Because you could be the world’s greatest poet but you don't collect the world like I do.

I know what it smelt like when I first saw you on the stage.

I know your favorite milkshake and what your last words to me were.

I know the way our friend wore her hair that night I brought you cookies.

I know what flavors of tea you always keep in the house.

I know because I collected the parts of the world that had your name written across them.

I collected the bits of the world that made holding on worth it.

The pieces of the world that might mean I meant something to you.

But instead here I am with all these pieces of you and the night sky and the coffee shop around the corner and poetry stuck to the palms of my hands

And I keep swiping at my jeans trying to get rid of the stains you left on my palms.

Talking to myself

Telling my heart and my mind two different things trying to equalize the two

But I can't.

I can't write our story and I can't stop wanting to write it because

If you taught me anything

It’s don't be afraid to lead with your heart.

And if I learned anything from your mistakes

It’s don't forget to involve your mind in the conversation.

So I’m stuck here wanting to write our story but I know if I did it would shatter the world around me.

It would shatter it because the next time I saw you I’d see the fictionalized imperfect man I created.

I would see scars instead of your open wounds.

I would be disappointed.

So I just spend my time fingers poised above the keys muttering sentences about the way we stared into each other’s eyes

But now we're strewn across this country.

Instead I sit silent and close my eyes and meditate to feel your arms around me.

Instead I write this.

I write this about my inability to write.

The way the worlds flow

But my mind stops them and diverts them to here.

A paragraph about how it could've been and how it never will be.

About how hope springs eternal even when you're dying for it to stop.

When the pleasant sunshine of the hope feels more like a tempest that makes you lose your footing.

I long to feel your spindly fingers playing with the air around us again.

I close my eyes and dream that I am within the splash zone of your words soaking them up with sponge like skin and ears.

I wish I could once again just show up on your doorstep and tell you I thought of you

Or spend the late hours of the evening and early hours of the morn curled up chatting with you about nothing imparticular as insomnia wraps its fingers around us both.

My heart tells me I could be happy again

If I just could get back to there.

But my head reminds me of the nights I screamed at you as the mists of the shower swirled around me.

The constant rock of worry I had sitting in my stomach when you told me not to worry.

The aggravation I kept bottled up because I couldn't tell anyone what you meant to me.

So as I sit here and write this I think

“I could tell the world, I could really tell the world.

Tell them how he made me feel.

How he tore me apart”.

But then my heart kicks in and reminds me.

I still love you.

So my heart tells me I could write our story.

But I know I can’t.