Even If We Don’t Make It

It was a normal, inconsequential Monday but when I look back on it now, I realize it was the beginning of the storm. Your crooked, slightly arrogant smile has forever been imprinted inside my mind, tucked away in the darkness but never quite out of reach. I knew in that moment that I would fall in love with you. I wasn’t entirely sure when or how but of it I was certain, and I was terrified. 

I spent the next months absorbing you, finding out every small, insignificant detail about you that I could,and storing it up for the times when the life I was living was too dull. I’d spin worlds in which we could be together, and I hated myself for it, but I hated you more.

I hated you for all the ways you made it seem I could have you and for all the ways I knew I couldn’t. But mostly I hated you for making me love you and for not catching me when I fell. This was the storm, the horrible, chaotic, midst of it all and no matter how many times I got hurt and felt myself slipping and coming undone, I got back up because I knew that what we had and how I felt about you was a gift. 

But even then I knew there was some part of you I could never have, that even if we made it, we wouldn’t quite get to where I wanted us to be. I would lie there in your arms, in the moments where silence was a comfort and I would trace the ink of your tattoo and memorize all of the scars scattered across your hands, knowing that I was storing it all away for when you are no longer here. When the only thing to keep me sane in the darkness is all of the memories, and all of the arguments. The tears and broken promises. The things you warned me would happen because our paths were always going to disconnect at some point and I didn’t want to believe it. 

I remember you told me we’d meet up some day in a coffee shop somewhere and we’d talk about the years that stretched between us and we’d find happiness for each other. Maybe we’d start again, fold ourselves into each other’s bodies in a way only we could and we’d know, like I always had, that what we have is a gift. 

So I promise you that I’ll love you forever, even if we don’t have that long, even if we don’t make it. And I’ll be seeing you in a coffee shop somewhere waiting for it all to start again.