Sundays Always Remind Me Of You

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Everything is cyclical.

Somehow it is always Sunday morning. Somehow, April turned to June and you became a distant memory, replaced with better habits and a boy with warm eyes. Somehow a Saturday night turned into the last Sunday we would spend together. He had built us a popsicle stick house with a frame built out of brittle lies and the first cold snap of winter shattered the idea of it ever becoming a home. You cannot dance in a kitchen that doesn’t exist. You cannot shower in a place where the pipes have burst.

Somehow, in trying to keep warm, I ended up comfortable under the covers, watching another Saturday night turn into Sunday through the pink half-light of a window that didn’t belong to you, either. You whispered “you are so hard to leave” but reminded me in the same breath that I am the one who has a tendency to go. 

The thing is, we have been here before, by another door. I had been building us a popsicle stick house glued together with hope; a place where, in the mornings, I would make you coffee and you would sit on the sink while I showered. Then one day you would not take off your shoes to come inside. It was as if you opened the door, saw the empty rooms, and decided to shut it quietly on the way out.

I am wondering if it is different now. Either way, I know how this story goes.

We are kissing in the bar, I am on the softball field, the hazy 4 a.m. glow on your alarm rings in a new day. February is turning into March overnight so I practice in the dark as I drive: “I am so scared. I don’t want to care.” I will only admit it to the quiet of the car because that is a rule: saying it out loud makes it real, right? It does not feel like I’m going anywhere if I keep my lips pressed to yours, or your knees tucked behind mine while we sleep.

I am wondering if it will be the same this time around. If this March will follow last year’s routine, where I kiss you and say “you are so hard to leave” only to come home to April, and another house where you will not take your shoes off or come inside again.