If I Could Write You To Permanence

By

If I could write you to permanence, I would start with your eyes. I always loved the color, the way they shined brightly in the afternoon sun, the way they made me suddenly smile and mix up my sentences and want to tell you stories all day, just to keep them focused on me. I would start with the way those eyes were always clear, even after a few drinks, never making me question your intentions, never making me doubt. Or how, when they looked at me, I didn’t feel small or silly, but empowered and strengthened and loved by you.

If I could write you to permanence, I would write about your hands. Because I’ve always had this funny fascination with hands, wanting them to be strong and big enough to cover my own, to reach across my waist or back and make me feel protected. Hands that are worn or calloused from work; hands that are tough but gentle. Hands that allow me to lead, to walk forward, to sometimes pull and guide. Hands that didn’t ever, and would never come at me with anger. Hands that were large and powerful, but could tenderly touch my cheek, making shivers run down my spine. And those were yours.

If I could write you to permanence, I’d write about your smile. How it was one of those half-smirks, always given away by that crease under your eye. How you would hold back your laughter, but never be able to keep yourself from shaking your head at me, that grin creeping across your face. I would write about how your warmth was contagious, how I loved the way that half-smile made me feel different, loved. How it wasn’t effortless to get that smirk to cross your face, but how that made our happy moments even more special somehow.

If I could write you to permanence, I’d write about the first time you said you loved me. Those words hanging in the air, mixed with alcohol and warmth and I, for the first time, was absolutely speechless. We had been angry at one another and you pulled me to you and let those words slip. And suddenly time stopped. The room around me went fuzzy and grey, I was spinning, dizzy, and all I could focus on was your face, those words frozen above us. And I believed you, like I never believed any man because I could feel, in that moment, it was real for both of us.

If I could write you to permanence, I would write our story. I would start at the beginning, the night you drove me home from that college party and we stayed up talking, watching the midnight clouds fade into sunrise, losing all sense of rules and time and place. I would write about our first kiss, and how scared I was, but how easy it was to meet your lips with mine. I would write about the magic of shifting between strangers to lovers, the mornings we shared coffees and dreams, the days you wrote me letters and I cooked you dinners or the nights you took me to dates at our favorite little restaurant and we talked about our families and friends and fears and what would happen in the months to come.

If I could write you to permanence, I would write all the words I should have told you before you walked away, before I left, before time and fate took their turns. I would write about how I should have been more patient, less stubborn, or maybe a mix of both. I would write that I was sorry, but tell you what I wanted. I would write how I wish you would have fought for me, for us, and maybe that would have changed something. I would write that I loved you, really loved you. I would write that I believed in us, even if the world didn’t. Even if you didn’t.

If I could write you to permanence, I would write with every piece of my heart. I’d write enough to make you remember, to make time rewind, to make us begin again as if nothing happened, as if nothing had changed. I would write poetry that calmed you, sentences that made your heart ache. I’d write enough to bring us back, to make us both forget what had pulled us apart.

If I could write you to permanence, I’d rewrite our ending. In this version, you’d take steps forward, and I wouldn’t take steps back. In this version, you’d get in your car, your bus, your train, your plane, your boat and you’d come find me, come tell me that we were wrong in letting go. In this version, I wouldn’t be so scared to tell you I missed you. And neither of us would be too timid, too stubborn, to prideful to take that first step.

In this version, I wouldn’t have to write you to permanence.
Because you’d already be here.

Marisa Donnelly is a poet and author of the book, Somewhere on a Highway, available here.