Who Would I Be if I Didn’t Have Hope?

Dear The One (who got away) [for now]

“Who are you anyway?” You asked me this years ago. Not directly. It was in a text that read, “W.a.y.a?” You always did have that subtle nature about you. You hide your profoundness behind your vagueness. It’s part of your charm. To this day, I’m still not certain what you meant by it. Maybe you were weary of me. Or perhaps you were cautious of yourself and what was raging inside of you. Either way, it stuck with me, just like everything you do. It makes for a great question. So I’ll ask it back to you. Who are you anyway? Are you really this person I’ve built up in my head? Is the tint on my glasses a little too rosy? Or do these lenses accurately depict the endless garden that is your existence? I side with the latter. The world of “us” is based in reality, but it is forged in imagination. Distance has a cruel way of doing that, and believe me, I have felt every mile. What we are dwells in the shadows of what we could be, of what we should be. And if you ever come to look for me, you will find me there, basking in our memories as I lay in endless want of you.

As I write this, our time in the sun is a distant memory. Since I’ve met you, my days start and end with you. You. Running around in my head. Don’t you ever get tired? Shit. You set my everything on fire. I’ll be straightforward. I am obsessed with you. I believe love requires that. Not unhealthily or possessively. I do not wish to own you. Well, maybe your mind. A little bit. The way you own mine. Except I’ll do it quietly. I don’t need a lot of room. Your mind is far too precious on its own. I’ll just grab a book and a cup of coffee and cozy myself inside a nook. How about your hypothalamus? Where love is born. I can caress it softly and let the oxytocin drip out of you.

No one is perfect but goddamn you’re right there. How’s the view on the pedestal on which I put you? Can you see the city skyline from there? Is the marble beneath your feet sturdy enough? I’m just being facetious. But truthfully, I gaze at you with lustful reverence. You’re head and shoulders above the rest. At times, you confuse me. I don’t have you figured out yet. I don’t think I want to. If you were a puzzle, I would hide your last piece under our couch so I could never solve you. I crave your incompleteness. Maybe because I believe it completes mine. Love is not two complete people coming together, it is two flawed, incomplete people that complete each other. That’s one of many things I’ve learned from loving you.

You appreciate easy-to-overlook details. You noticed the freckles on my neck form a constellation with the one on my jawline. I noticed that when I was nineteen. No one else would give a shit. When the picture I drew you got crumpled in my suitcase, I was so upset. But you loved it and said it was about the journey of coming there. Who else but you would say that? You have so much depth. There’s nothing surface about you, except endless beauty. I’ll never stop digging. I would spend my last dollar on an excavator if I had to.

My ceiling and I have a secret relationship. It started off platonically, but it has become slightly intimate. We exchange deep, soulful looks in the middle of the night. 4 AM seems to be a popular time. I hope it doesn’t get the wrong idea. Without fail, I have you on my mind. Our wordless conversations run their course and the lonely aching slowly dwindles, transcending to blissful dreams, where I know I can see you and feel you. I’ve heard your voice twice in my dreams. What a way to wake up.

You’re a paradox. A contradiction. Your entire being is shrouded in mystery. You push and you pull without doing anything. You have a mysticism in every step. If your lips were laced in hemlock, I wouldn't hesitate to kiss them. You fill my void and create one at the same time. I hate that I love it, but I would choose it every time.

Your voice is my painkiller. If your voice was a fire alarm, I would pull it daily and you would find me dancing within these spacious walls graffitied with your name. You personify a synecdoche. I could look at a picture of your fingertips and my unceasing mind would teleport me back to when I held your hand.

Your absence is a cloud that looms over my daily life. When I work, you can find me mumbling to myself or counting with my fingers. My coworkers will ask me what I am saying or what I am doing. I’ll simply shrug it off. But they don’t know I’m counting syllables for haikus or repeating sentences so I won’t forget them. I must admit…some strangers know that you’re the One. I swear it just came up. You blend naturally in the conversations of “Where do I see myself?” I know you like privacy. I kept it discreet. But damn, you should see the way my eyes light up when I discuss you. I’ve heard that more than once. But I tell them I can’t explain it. I can’t explain you. You’re harder to describe than a color. They wouldn’t understand anyway. No one could fathom the persistence required to get to know you. So I leave it at that, and continue loving you in silence, and no one ever knows where or how my anguish pulsates.

I can’t go to the places I went with you. I can’t even drive by them. I’ll take the longer, less convenient route if it means avoiding them. I don’t want to taste my own blood. I don’t like that ashy taste that remains on my tongue from the fire you once lit. Who is this sentimental person I’ve become? Why does this warmth inside me feel more natural than the cold demeanor I used to carry? It took you to exhume the beautiful parts of myself that I kept hidden for so long.

Most of my life, I questioned the existence of a higher power. I always felt the universe was indifferent. It was empty and a little sad, but I resonated with that. I found God to be an interesting concept but one that was ultimately unknowable. From knowing you, and mostly in missing you, I feel more connected to a greater entity than myself. My “prayers” about you or wishes that my heart makes always seem to get answered. Maybe it’s energy. Maybe it’s a heightened sense of self-awareness that leaks out of my pores into the cosmos. But it leads me to you every time.

We’ve done it all in my mind. You make fun of the way I fold a t-shirt and you show me a better way. You put my hands over your eyes when the scary parts of the movie happen. Did you know that? We’ve seen the countries worth seeing. We fought and we made up. We gave it our all because we were worth nothing less than that.

I’ll never stop, but I’m tired of missing you. This patience shit is brutal. It goes against my every fiber. Do you agree? I wonder what you say to yourself when our phone calls end. Does your tongue hurt from the number of times you bite it? Does your stomach do somersaults at what you leave unsaid? I know your silence is by default. I also know that it is your weakness. I think you’re special because of it. Your weaknesses are my biggest weakness. I wouldn’t change a thing about you. Except your last name.

-‘til the stars burn out,

D