I Miss You In The Winter

I miss you in the winter.

For the last five winters, to be exact. I miss you when the weather turns cold and the skies grey. I miss you when slow days turn into the months in which, years ago, I came the closest that I ever did to having you. Months that will always remind me of the not-quite relationship that we almost had.

I miss you when I listen to your music. The music that connected us, the lyrics that you cited to me in dark corners of crowded rooms. The music that made me fall in love with you. The music that inspired the lyrics that bled from your pen as you thought about me, wrote me into the story of your life. The story that went on without me. The lyrics that I will never get out of my head, the vague melody that will forever haunt my heart.

I miss you when I get to wondering. Wondering if the truest love that I have ever experienced meant anything to you. If I affected your life half as much as you shattered mine. I wonder if I taught you anything while you were teaching me the most important lessons I’ve ever learned, while you were showing me what passion can really be. I wonder if you meant it when you said you loved me, or if it was just another lyric written with clandestine intentions.

I miss you when I’m feeling apathetic. When nothing in my life compares to what I felt for you. When I find myself at the fiery conclusion of another relationship, full of potential but lacking in one aspect. Lacking you. I turn off the music. I vow to stop wondering, to focus on anything else. Anything but you. To wonder about what could be, instead of what could have been. To face forward and never look back.

Until next winter.