#ephemeralities

It’s quiet, this loving. It sneaks up on you. One day you’re sitting beside each other and she’s playing with your hair absentmindedly and the next your heart is swelling and you can’t describe the warmth that spreads through you when she takes your hand and squeezes, but you know you’re not supposed to scoot closer to her when you’re already inches apart. And it burns to see her with that other girl but you can’t tell if you miss her and all the minutes you used to spend together or if you’re wishing you were the other girl. And does your stomach hurt when she comes out to you because you’re afraid of the implications or because you know that it means the way you heart races around her could become more real?

It’s quick, this loving. It sneaks up on you. One moment you’re laughing at one of her jokes and the next you’re wishing to kiss the smile off her face. You’ve never felt this way about a girl before and you know you shouldn’t, so you bury it but it keeps resurfacing and swallowing you whole. You’re holding hands on the way to class and she’s kissing your forehead when you’re upset and her sweater is just warm enough for those mornings when you forget yours. And you’re six feet under when you realize you’re in love with her. And she’s moving on and on and maybe when she gave you that jar of things she loved about you she meant it that way too. But it’s too far away now to touch. You’re still holding her hand but it’s distant now and you’re fighting every week and she’s pretending everything’s fine but when you call her out for lying, she says lying isn’t the worst a person can do and you stay because she loves you and you promised never to leave. And you’re still in love—how could you ever stop?—but you’re forgetting all the good for the bad. You’re in love with a statue who you can barely call best friend. 

It’s long, this loving. She doesn’t deserve it and neither do you. You’re no longer 16 swinging your hands on the walk to class and she’s not kissing your forehead and reading your poems each night. You had an always like Hazel and Gus and now she flinches from your hugs. You had an always like Hazel and Gus but not like that, because just friends spend all day sending just hearts back and forth and vowing to live together above a bookstore you own together, because just friends hold hands in a dimly lit movie theatre and just friends kiss each other’s cheeks and just friends have the kind of passion people write poems about. And you haven’t talked in over a year now and it’s both of your faults and you know now that you confused manipulation for love but you still wonder if she felt that way too. 

It still burns, this loving, in a forest somewhere you cannot visit. You’re lying each time you say you do not miss it.

Maybe loving your best friend was a mistake but now you know why all the poets weep. You were never meant for her. This loving was a futile thing, but it was strong and real and hopeful.

nearly four years older than i was back then

and i feel my heart as it pieces itself back together,

forgetting you, forgiving you, finding me

amidst the parts of myself i’d given up

to be who you wanted.

i wore pink to my graduation,

a color you would have scoffed at,

and i listen to live videos of taylor swift’s concerts,

my favorite singer, even though

you hated her.

i laugh a little harder, walk a little crooked,

write poems late at night but never in the middle

of the morning,

and i dream, you know,

because now that the sky has cleared

i feel like i can.

nearly four years older than i was back then

and i can see it now,

the haze that covered us, that made me believe

you were supposed to be the everything i thought

you were.

i used to wish the worst for you,

and i lied when i said i didn’t.

maybe then i thought i meant it.

but for a long time, i wanted you to miss me,

wanted you to hurt,

wanted you to feel the way i felt,

wanted to read a poem about me on your tumblr

that you never wrote.

and i wished the worst for me too.

thought that leaving you would scar me,

painted me a shade of gray no one could ever love.

that leaving was the crime you said it would be,

that i’m the same as all the ones before,

that i betrayed you in my final act

of my performance of the girl who would never leave.

but now, i wish the best for both of us.

i hope you have a big apartment and you can see

the toronto sunset from your windows.

i hope you have someone to love and who loves you.

i hope you finally took yourself to therapy

and that your wounds are healing from all the cuts

you gave yourself.

i hope you love yourself a little more than you did before.

and i hope if you think of me, it’s more than our last words.

i hope someday i stop writing poems about you.

i hope i stop fearing that all the ghosts

in my closet will come out

in the shape of someone new.

i hope i stop thinking i’m unloveable, thinking

everyone will fizzle out of love with me

the way you did.

i hope someday your birthday passes

and i don’t think of you.

and i hope someday thinking of you

doesn’t feel like losing

a sober chip.

nearly four years older than i was back then

and the horizon seems closer.

i can’t make out your face clearly in my memory,

but i know it used to make me smile

before it made me sad.

nearly four years older than i was back then

and i wouldn’t change a thing, you know.

at one point i would have thought that heartless,

but if it’s heartless to protect your own,

then so be it. call me heartless.

i know i did it to keep mine beating.

nearly four years older than i was back then

The smoke wraps her in its fleeting embrace In her eyes a flicker of fire. The Night - the Great Captor has her in his tendrils We twine and entwine to escape the wraiths of smoke

My world blurred Reeling from my heart’s echoes. I feel symphonies in my veins as we weave a pattern through the pulsating crowd.

Light penetrates the heavy cloud, traces an indecipherable note on her face flits from ear to ear.