You always remind me of the serene feeling that comes over me on a summer night when I’m sober enough to remember my problems but drunk enough not to care too deeply. You’re the cool breeze and reaching for a jacket you don’t really need just because it makes you feel safe. You feel like safety. Like if I hold you tight enough, my dreams will come true. Like if I hold you tight enough, I can break away from the limitations of time and stay here, in this moment, forever. Like somehow a grasp tight enough can make you stay. You feel like I knew you weren’t going to stay. But I hoped. The tricky thing is you can fight away your expectations, resign to a cynical view, accept the inevitable, but you can’t stop the overwhelming part of you that hopes for something else. And what they don’t tell you is that it’s not your expectations that kill you, it’s your hopes.

God knows I wanted you to stay. You know I’m not one for religion, but if there was a God on our side, I’d worship his every creed. But that’s the tragedy of you and I. There was nothing on our side, no one rooting for us. We were a losing team fading slowly but surely into irrelevance. We were one lone fan screaming on the sidelines, promises of nothing but disappointment and broken spirits. We were not for this world, you and I. Sometimes I imagine us in a world that rooted for us. I imagine fireworks and cheering, I imagine more than one lone heart praying for the impossible. It all exists so beautifully in my imagination that I am almost satisfied with it living inside of there forever.

The more I think about you, the more unfiltered my thoughts become. Sometimes I want to begin and end my writing with your name. I want to tell the world that you are behind my unfiltered thoughts. That you are the bittersweet taste stuck on my tongue. That in a world full of beauty, you are the most stunning thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. I never want to forget you. But I want your taste out of my mouth so badly. I want your taste out of my mouth so badly that I am willing to swallow poison. I’d rather taste nothing at all than feel your bitter absence with every single thing that comes close to me. I miss you so much but it is time to let you go.

This is the part of my unfiltered thoughts where I remember that this isn’t healthy. This is the part of my unfiltered thoughts where I let you go. This is the part of my unfiltered thoughts where I am still terrified. Terrified that when I let you go, I’ll never find something this beautiful, not even in my own imagination.

I see so much beauty every day, but nothing like you, and that is terrifying. I wonder what moved me before you. I wonder what moves people who don’t know you.

But, this is the part of the night where I become sober enough to forget you again. Sober enough to know you are gone. Sober enough to find the filter that keeps me sane, the filter that keeps you out. I’m sober enough to let you go now, and I’ve swallowed poison to come this far. I want you to know that today was so sunny. And you would have loved it. I want to send you some sun, but I remember you carry it with you. And I like to think that you send me bits of it every day. That you think of me. That you let me go, but on warm, half-drunken nights, you remember that you almost stayed. I hope somewhere in your unfiltered thoughts you meet me right here, at this very spot, sending me some sun and wishing you were feeling my warmth instead.