goaheadandflyaway

I live in a house of mirrors

A different reflection of myself in each one

No wonder I have felt so alone

I got lost in the smoke

I got lost in the distortion

Only liking the best parts of myself

Running from my other half

Believing I shouldn’t change for anyone

But, I was only running from myself

It’s a strange thing that happened

I find my reflection all around me now

And, you appeared as soon as I did

We are staring ourselves in the eyes now

The perfect representation

I never saw my power

Until he stood right there in front of me

Separated by a world that never understood us

I have always been in love with the night

And it’s no wonder

I am the sun, and he’s my moon

Oh, the destruction we’d cause

If we ever got together

“I don’t know what it is about you.”

I think about him each time that I put that CD in and that song comes on. Not that he’d appreciate the song. He’d probably hate it. Though it’s by one of my favorite bands, it’s not one of my favorite albums. The truth is I just listen to it just to hear that one line. “I don’t know what it is about you” is the line, but I do know what it is about him. I know why I look for him in everyone I meet. I know why I think about him when I slip back into the same mistakes I have been making for these two-and-a-half years. I slip, though, because he’s not here.

It’s hard not to fuck up when you think too much about being alone. Not that I don’t love being by myself. I do. I love it too much, but it’s always better when you’ve got some company while being independent. If that makes sense to you. It may not, but he’d get it. But, I kept slipping in and out of something that I knew didn’t make me happy. I think I liked the thrill—the feeling of escaping something dangerous, time and time again. It made me feel strong and powerful.

He’d get it.

That is what it is about him, though. 

He is art—I get him. It’s kind of effortless. And, he doesn’t have to try to get me, When I’m upset, he lets me be upset. When I’m happy, he lets me be happy. He lets me be angry. He listens. He makes me feel like it’s okay to be me, which is the one thing I’ve always wanted. 

I have changed drastically throughout my twenties. I’m not the same girl I was. Fuck, I don’t think he would have liked me back then. Our past molded us into this masterpiece. He doesn’t speak much of his, but that’s okay.

I’m a strange one. I don’t acquire the same attention that most women need. I don’t like when men are overly affectionate when it’s unnecessary. I don’t want to be anyone’s baby.  He doesn’t do any of the things that make me feel uncomfortable, and I didn’t even have to tell him what not to do. 

One morning, I woke up to a text that read: You’re the best, Angel. When he called me by my name, it left me in chills. I’ve been in love with him for a while now. Longer than I probably realize. I am pretty sure that it’s been the same for him though neither of us has dared to say it to the other. 

Most girls would hate that, but I like it.

But, see, I have been in relationships where “I love you” was said way too many times, yet I felt like the most unloved person on the planet. I finally feel loved. We would be together now if circumstances were different. At least, that is what I keep telling myself. And, there are times when I want to tell him that they aren’t shit. But, I haven’t said that either. This, love, is not something I want to push because I’ve pushed before. It didn’t end well. I don’t want anything tragic to happen to the us that I’m so in love with. So, I wait here with him there hoping that somewhere in the future we will be.

If that doesn’t happen, I hope that someone will eventually love me the way that he does.

               “I don’t know what it is about you.”

Dancing in the city streets to your slow-motion laughter

Under the flashing lights red to green

Your fingers pulling me across in front of the

Forward motion right into your chest as you

Kiss my vices right off of my lips

I don’t want to think about forever

What a dangerous one to have

I just want to think about these seconds now

Right now

If this is all we have, I don’t care

Because, we are art right now

She sleeps behind a stone door, locked, numbered with his initials. And, even though I packed her away in a tidy grave, she tries to claw her way to the surface making a mess out of everything, especially when he needs her. I can’t deny it. She was the best part of me though she had a mind for crying and thought about death more often than not. (She got what she wanted and now she wants my body back.) She was young and innocent, quiet, afraid. She thought that once she found a love for her broken body that that was gonna make the world spin in a better, beautiful way. She—she loved. She could say it, too.

I know that the world thinks I’m faking. That it’s all a façade. That I am still her. But, I’m not. I’m only her with him. He just has this way with me. And, it brings her back from the crypt. It’s like, it’s like when we speak, hearing those calming bells and it elevates. That is when she digs. It’s gorgeous, so beautiful. Yet, it’s the most frightening feeling I’ve known, thus far.

Technically, he wasn’t her first love. But, dare I say it now, he was the love of her life. (That’s something that won’t ever die, I’m afraid.) It’s complicated because they were never more than friends, but then again, they were more than words could ever describe. That was what was so special about it—having the love of your life being that, something you never really had.

He loved her. He loved her. He was there for her in some of her darkest moments. He helped her when he wasn’t even aware. He loved her exactly the way she needed to be loved. He wouldn’t hurt her. He didn’t hurt her once. He didn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t hurt her.

          Not in a thousand, million years, he wouldn’t hurt her even if he could.

She waited for him for all of those, too. She waited for him to tell her he loved her. And, she thought he did in little ways. She thought that one day, it’d happen. She imagined how happy he’d make her as they lied in the grass, looking up at our home. He’d make her laugh and she’d kiss him. She wouldn’t even have to say it, but she would.

Just when she thought it could be, he left her hanging by a noose with a weight of an ugly world upon her shoulders. Doubt spun her ‘round with the earth as she sang those old songs, waiting on a painless go.

He didn’t save her. Not this time. Maybe, he was saving someone else, saving himself. 

                       Maybe she had it all wrong.

You know, the funny thing of it is that when we need something to be so true we hear what we want to hear in those lyrics. Sometimes, we sing the right words at the wrong time or the wrong ones with the perfect timing.

Some of her favorite lines of her favorite songs were the ones she made up. They were the ones she heard wrong.

                       Maybe, she had it wrong.

A lot has happened since then. A lot’s changed. Almost everything, everything except the love for him. That is the only piece that remains of her. That’s how you know you love someone right. It never dies.

           I often talk to him as if he is a ghost, shoveling dirt upon her home to the beat:

I am, now, whom I wished I was then, with a love for myself. I am, now, whom I wished I was then, with a hunger for making a mess of anyone who tries to make a mess of me.

I wonder if he can hear me, now. I wonder if he can love me, now.

I was a different age when my heart ran warm under a closer sun. A boy I once loved set fire to the rivers and turned everything to stone. That is when I changed orbit somehow and migrated to a colder place.

There was a time when my favorite color was purple, believe it or not. Now, it’s just black—black.

It is no secret I love to play God. Anyone with a passion to create understands what I mean. It took me a while to figure out that fate is something of control, something determined by choices. If I could rewrite my past, I would.

I would write it so the right one would have that part of me. I would write it so my loving heart would never know how it feels to be broken into shattered debris revolving around a dark center. My first love wouldn’t have been that boy at all, which is crazy for me to think about because he is the one who taught me how to be independent, to stand on my own. There’s no question about it. I needed to learn those lessons. I can’t help but to wonder if someone else could’ve done it better though—with respect, with love, with a little more care. 

Maybe I wouldn’t be this monster I am now. Maybe my heart wouldn’t be black. 

Sometimes, I feel her inside of me still. Purple. She talks to me from the afterlife, trying to remind me of before. Scratching from the other side. She’s telling me how to feel and what to do, things I’d rather not. She warns me she’ll be resurrected one day when he comes. I think she means when I find someone who notices every little thing about me that I think no one sees: the freckle on my lip, the way I lull myself to sleep with the bouncing of my left foot, the specks of brown in my light eyes. Not just any man, though. He has to have a familiar mind. “You are not the one to say it now, but you’ll be me again. You’ll say it too much.” I try to ignore her, but she continues, “Your heart will thrive again. All it will take is a god to turn you into a galaxy.” 

You’re still me, she says.