Maybe It’s Not Supposed To Be You

I had a dream a few nights ago that I learned you proposed to her. I woke up screaming “it’s supposed to be me.” It is. It is.

I laid awake in bed all night, the silence of your absence so loud I could feel every sound of the night being drowned out, the dread in my heart so heavy I could feel the earth quiver with each breath I took struggling not to choke on your name.

I couldn’t fall back asleep because I realized I’ll never see you again, because a deep sense of emptiness washed over me thinking about how I’ll never again feel your fingertips against my skin, because my mouth doesn’t know if it’ll ever know bliss like that which came from between your lips.

Is this what it feels to know you’re lost for me?

It can be argued that you can’t lose something you never had, that you’re the one with a loss to mourn. That you’ve always been weak and not man enough. That you’ve never merited anything my glass heart feels for you. That I’ve always sat at the palm of your hand and you never curled it into a fist so you’d never lose me. That although I am something you never wanted, I am something you never deserved.

But knowing that you’re out there somewhere and not with me somehow feels like a loss, somehow feels like a death I’ve got to grieve.

Knowing that somewhere out there there’s you, epitome of ecstasy, and having to be denied of you, leaves a gaping whole in me so big I’m scared there’s no other touch with which it can be filled.

I could have sworn you and I knew each other before this life. That you hadn’t only just held me in this one. That we were somehow connected through space and time.

I don’t know what to call this anymore. I could have sworn that what I feel for you is love. Maybe it’s just the way you always made me feel unashamed, the way I felt comfortable telling you anything, even the things that painted me in a bad light. Maybe it’s just the way I only ever felt beautiful with you, the way you actually made me believe it. Maybe it’s just the way you made me feel unapologetic for exactly who I am. The way you were unafraid of every dark corner of my soul. Maybe it’s just that feeling of home your arms evoked. Maybe it’s just that I had never felt the things that I did when you’d get lost in my skin.

I’m afraid you were it for me. I’m afraid I’ll never feel anything that will surpass the otherworldly connection you and I had.

You called it transcendent. But if that were true it’d be me, not her, taking up the left side of your bed.

You called me your dream, you called us your dream. But if that were true I wouldn’t be waking up to ones in which you give her a ring.

Maybe it wasn’t supposed to ever be me, maybe you’re not it for me either, not in this life at least. Maybe they’ve all been lies as well in other lives.