We Were Never Together But I’ll Always Think of You

It’s a haunting of the most arctic kind, but it’s the wildest type of fire. And it burns through everything. Right through logic, right through sanity, right through all the times you could have had me and through all the times you never picked me, right through all the times you took my body but didn’t keep me warm through the night, right through all the times you never stayed, right through all the time I wished you had.

Know that anytime I come across your mind, the thought of you, your voice, your hands, has stalked mine a thousand times. That on the nights I have insomnia I wonder how easy it would be to fall asleep if you were laying right next to me. That on the days the blues come knocking I look at the door and wish it was you. That amidst all my aching I still think of you. And even when I’m not thinking of you there’s still your slight silhouette haunting the inner corridors of my heart.

I miss you more than I should, more than you deserve for me to. I miss you like this life is low tide and you’re the waves and I’m the sand. I miss you even though I know we aren’t meant to be together. And just because we weren’t meant to be together, doesn’t mean I haven’t stopped dreaming or writing about what we could have been.

Maybe in another life, in other worlds, in parallel universes I come home and find you there opening up our favorite bottle of Cabernet. Maybe you unzip my dress and rub my neck. Maybe we put on hold our favorite record because you want me to read to you from my notebooks. Maybe you say I’d rather your voice to feel your poetry than looking at letters on a page. Maybe my poetry is full more of bright colors and less of heartache.

But here, it’s June and 7 PM on a Thursday and I haven’t seen you since February. Since we shared a few hours in an empty apartment with only a bed, two bottles of wine and an old stereo. I remember being in your arms, what your voice sounded like that night, I remember the look in your eyes the last time I heard you tell me you love me. I know they reflected mine, I know there was wonder, I know there was fear, I know we were both wondering if there would be a next time.

I’ll never forgive myself for not saying the words my tongue so badly ached to say. Stay with me. Choose me. In my arms you don’t have to hide. My scars ache with want for your hands, for your own scars. My darkness wants to play with your darkness. I will love the parts of you that have never been loved by anyone else. Choose me. We can be happy together. This is worth burning everything we know to the ground. We can build new cities together. Choose me. Stay with me. Be with me. I don’t want to live wondering what could have been.

But instead I kissed you goodbye with a knot in my throat and got in my car biting my tongue. I waited, I wished, to see you turn back and say I choose you, be with me, but you didn’t. It’s the most physical kind of wanting and of aching I’ve ever known.

You always said you looked at the moon and thought of me, that she reminded you of me, that you looked at her and wondered if I was thinking of you too. You always told me to look at it when I missed you. Tonight I’ll be looking at her, remembering you. Tonight I’ll be dreaming of worlds where we exist hand in hand dancing under her light in that place where the waves meet the sand.