your cup of tea

It’s the things we love most, that destroy us.

I get exhausted just thinking about all the places I went for you, traveling from city to city, through towns and airports and bars both bleak and beautiful. Surrounded by strangers when all I wanted was you, I took planes and trains, drove in cars and cabs, walked my tired feet up any street I needed to if it meant you were at the end of it, carried all my baggage emotional and physical to whatever house or hotel you were calling home in hopes of finding you, looking into those eyes, holding that face, telling you ‘I love you, it’s you, I’m here, did you miss me,’ and finally hearing ‘I love you back, it’s you too, you’re here, there’s a hole in my heart shaped like you.’ I collected boarding passes like love letters, got on a plane every week and flew across this laborious country to see you, stretched my weary body from coast to coast, cried in coach over cornfields, lakes, square states and blurry shapes as I drank a soda, a seltzer, a wine and a whiskey, landed in New York then Los Angeles then your arms, skidded down the tarmac in sun and rain, cloudy and clear skies, morning, noon and night, wondering every time if you’d greet me, praying on each runway you’d be at arrivals with flowers, with a smile, with your heart still mine, hoping with all my miles and might that you were the same boy I left at departures saying ‘see you soon.’ The last trip I took for you I knew it was the end: I listened to the ding of the fasten seatbelt sign like it was a symphony, sipped my mini bottle of cabernet like it was the best vintage I’d ever drunk, read the Sky Mall like it was poetry, reveled in the turbulence like it was a roller coaster, filled up my lungs with the sterile airplane air, memorized the face of each flight attendant and pilot and passenger, the taxi driver and bellboy and concierge, tried to tell every one of them with my sad eyes and broken heart they were all supporting characters in this tragic love story, this mission doomed for failure, our final destination. It’s not your fault I can’t sit in the window seat anymore because I still see you on the airplane wing or that I hear your voice when it’s the captain speaking, and I’m not angry about all the days I spent flying and driving and walking to you or the bones I broke carrying your load and mine in and out of each other’s lives or all the miles I put on my heart, because every ride to every airport sitting in traffic and every delay and inconvenience and jetlagged fidgety slumber led me straight to you, taught me how to live on the road, and eventually brought me home.

She has become an expert at confusing what is with what was with what should be with what could be.