Paintings

Remember that time I almost told you I was in love with you?

Or the way I shook internally when you first sat down to talk to me?

Or maybe the beautiful colors that painted the night sky a royal romantic blue while you walked me home?

Or how about the sound the trees made as we sat in your kitchen?

No?

You don’t remember any of those?

Well that’s because I saw an alternate history.

You look back and think of our friendship.

About how you opened up a little to me.

How you trusted me a bit.

Or maybe how I could joke with you.

How I wasn’t intimidated by you.

How I called you out on your shit.

And I see it in the way it all was pastel colors.

Never fully bright, but the muted colors of a crush.

How I took little steps into your life.

How I cared more about you more than you did for me.

And it got me thinking.

How many alternate histories are there?

How many people think of me a different way than I think of them.

How many pictures would be painted

If we all sat down and threw our stories on canvas?

Alternate histories filling up the museums and galleries

Lined across streets like down on their like veterans.

Deserving of a rightful home but no one brave enough to give them one.

Because some alternate histories are ugly.

Some of them are rude and crude.

Some of them are petite and quiet.

Some of them are brash and obnoxious.

But yours and mine?

Our little alternate histories would be hung over kitchen nooks.

Or bathtubs.

Little images describing a true love crush and friendship.

Yes, our alternate histories would be painted with all the good colors.

And hung where families could look up and smile.

Smile and think of the artists in their perfect little alternate history worlds.

But sit them next to each other.

Sit our little paintings next to each other and they’d be tinged a little.

A sad little color that would creep into mine.

That would say I wanted more.

That I tried for more.

And a weak watery feeling that would come over yours

A watered down friendship,

Something not fully founded because only one person was trying.

So our alternate histories sit on separate walls

Miles apart.

Just the way they were meant to be.