Excerpt from a letter that now almost seems like it was written in a past life.
I’ll miss your stories. I’ll miss fighting with you.
I’ll miss your deep voice. I’ll miss knowing you.
I’ll miss hearing your smile through the phone. I’ll miss you calling me on your lunch break.
I’ll miss falling asleep to your text messages. I’ll miss waking up to your text messages.
I will miss everything so fucking much.
God, it’s really over.
My heart is so heavy.
It is so so tired.
–S.
All I really know is that we were on the phone and he told me that he wanted to tell me a story.
I was happy because I knew in that moment that he could have chosen to be on the phone with anyone, but he chose me.
And there I am listening to a story about a man with only one thumb.
But he is laughing and I am not.
He says, ‘I guess you just had to be there.’
It’s not that. I am not laughing because a big part of me is sad. I’m sad because I am thinking and preparing for a moment a million moments from now – when he doesn’t tell me these stories.
–S.
2014.
I’m driving home.
It’s 2:32 in the morning.
It’s chilly in Texas now.
More late at night than during any other time of the day.
I wonder what the weather is like where you are. I turn the radio on, and I hear Justin Timberlake taking back the night.
I wonder what you’re listening to nowadays. Are you playing your piano?
I turn the radio off. I don’t want to take back this night. It’s beautiful. I want to burn it into my memory forever. It’s truly been special and I haven’t done anything special in quite some time. When I am wearing my faux leather black boots, I feel like I can do anything. I wore them tonight. If we still spoke, you’d know about them. I would have sent you a picture. I was dressed in all black with touches of gold jewelry. I felt sexy and mysterious all wrapped into one with a ribbon on it.
I laughed a lot tonight. Real laughter. I meant all of it.
And there was this moment when I was driving home, and the air was blowing aggressively against my face, that I missed you.
I really really missed you.
I wondered if you were at work maybe thinking of me too.
I wanted you to wrap your words around me and bring me warmth the rest of the car ride home.
I wanted you to lay me down on my pillow and sing me to sleep.
Your deep low timbre.
I would do anything to hear your smile – even over the telephone.
I don’t even need to see it, it would be enough.
Just to know that it was my smile. For me. Because of me.
If it’s cold where you are, I wish you warmth.
I wish you the sun.
–S.
I remember those faux leather black boots. I wore them into another love story. They were my favorite boots to dance in downtown. Eventually – one of them started coming apart and I would use black tape to keep it together. I was wearing them in dimly lit bars and clubs, but also didn’t give a fuck if anyone noticed the tape.
I loved those black boots. I LIVED in those black boots.
RIP Faux Leather Black Boots.
2014.
For a while there, I didn’t listen to any music that had the piano in it.
And that’s my favorite kind of music.
I would imagine your long fingers hitting the keys and all of the people that were there to witness your song.
All of the girls probably swooning over your musical abilities.
I hated them, you know. I hated you.
But as I am writing this – a piano is serenading me.
And you no longer have that hold.
See,
you don’t get to take music.
You don’t get to take real love away from me.
You don’t get pianos and the sounds they make.
You don’t get any hate.
Even though it never feels like it, I know that there is life after heartbreak.
Music still plays.
And the sound of letting go is the most beautiful note I’ve ever heard.
–S.
I think of myself as a side table that holds a lamp.
Or maybe I am the lamp.
Or a dining room chair.
Or a piece of art hung unbalanced on the wall.
Or a dusty picture frame.
Or an ottoman nobody sits on.
Or maybe I’m a spatula sitting in a drawer that’s barely opened.
Or a battery in a remote control.
That’s how working customer service makes me feel.
Like a piece of furniture, a piece of decor, or a kitchen appliance.
Something devoid of humanity.
I think I had two meaningful conversations today and they were both with co-workers.
Somedays, I don’t even know that there are two.
And I wonder – how much longer do I have it in me to be a ziploc bag or a plastic orchid or a garden gnome?
I wonder.
–S.
Excerpt from years ago.
I’ve had your number memorized by heart for years now. The last few years – I haven’t actually used it for anything. We are over. We don’t talk anymore. When someone doesn’t live in the same city as you in certain ways it is easier to get over them.
I never have to see you at the grocery store. I never have to pass by you on my way to class. I never have to see you at the bar with another girl. Friends and family won’t tell me that they talked to you or saw you. I don’t have to go through those feelings.
Something was making it hard for me to fall asleep two nights ago. The truth is that I haven’t thought about you in a while. And then out of the darkness of my room – your phone number manifests itself into my head. I get this feeling that I can’t shake. I have to call you. I really don’t want to go there. I don’t want to hear your voice. It’s been so long. Too long.
And then my fingers are flying across my phone. My phone is lighting up. My memory is dialing your number. Your phone is ringing. Of course I blocked my own number, so you couldn’t see it and muted my end of the phone call.
Creep, I know.
It went to voicemail and some random girl explained that she couldn’t get to her phone.
I hang up.
It gave me a sense of comfort that the number didn’t belong to you anymore.
I was trying to fall asleep last night when it hit me – I was wrong.
The number I dialed two nights ago was so wrong. The right number came to me. I dialed it again, blocked my number, and muted the call.
You answered.
My breath caught and my heart sped up.
You answered after five or six rings because I woke you up. It was about 1:30 in the morning and your voice was heavy with sleep. You kept saying hello and then you hung up.
I wanted to cry. When we were mad at each other – I would always call you with my number blocked, just so I could hear your voice before I went to sleep.
I was a teenager, in love, and dumb.
I never told you it was me and you never talked about the blocked phone calls you’d been receiving.
I think that you knew. I’m almost sure that you did.
I wanted to cry because that voice was still so familiar to me after all this time. It had been the soundtrack to many of my summers, but that boy was different now. He became a man. I was different now. I became a woman.
I hope that life is treating you okay.
And I wonder if you ever get a feeling that you can’t shake in the middle of the night telling you to call me – maybe I would pick up. Maybe you’d hear my voice again and it wouldn’t have changed.
–S.
I remember waking up to the sound of airplanes taking off.
You would leave the window open during the evening,
the only time the Texas summer was bearable.
I remember your bed,
and your head,
and my legs.
–S.
I believe if you squint just right, you can still see us off in the distance, loving and laughing, fighting and kissing, sharing and giving.
In a parallel universe, or a sister life, we are still one, even though in this life, what’s done is done.
Off in the distance, look there, squint and wait for the light to hit just right, you can see my head on your shoulder.
And it’s still on your shoulder when I close my eyes at night.
–S.
I want you to know that I would do it all over again.
Every single moment, just to laugh with you again.
The joy. The pain.
The hate. The love.
The betrayal. The jealousy.
The disappointment. The lying.
The rainbow of emotions.
The shouting in the parking lot.
The drunken dirty whispers.
All to hear you laugh again.
To see you light up again.
To hear that small satisfied sigh before you smile again.
I would do it all.
Again.
Again.
Again.
With you.
Maybe I’m crazy,
but I never said that I was sane, baby.
–S.
The Messy Middle 🖤 