rage and recovery

i'll meet you in between the moon and the stars

it's been one month and two days since I've seen your face, heard your laugh, felt your eyes on me from across the room. I thought it would be easier than this. I thought I would be able to know when it was finally over. But I don't and it's not because every tan truck is yours and every loud laugh is you and every backwards hat is you and every shade of blue is you and I miss you. I don't know why but I do. I miss my distraction. I miss my secret love and the tension in your shoulders when I walked too close. I miss the way you would look at me out of the corner of your eye and walk all the way across the store just to make me laugh. Sometimes I liked to think you liked the sound of my laugh too. And I don't know why all your jokes were funnier than everyone else's and I don't want to yearn for the lean in your step or your smile shooting at me like lightening. And I should hate you because you were cruel and a liar and too hard to love, but I don't and I can't because I saw some of my hurt in you. I saw the way my face crumbled when my father left and the rage in my heart at all the pain borne on children. I think my soul looked at yours and thought 'ah, you're just like me.' But I guess broken does not heal bruised and rage cannot coddle hurt and you and I just had too many sharp edges to be able to make a whole puzzle. But I know the way you looked at me when you thought I wasn't watching and I remember what it felt like to wrap a bandaid around your thumb with nimble fingers and I can't forget the set in your jaw, the backwards ways in which you shooed everyone away from me because you were too afraid to tell me you wanted me but too possessive to let me go. And part of me wishes I told you I loved you when I ran into the street and grabbed your arm like some kind of movie, because I did, I do, I think I always will. But fear will always be the downfall of us, even now as I write this to you, I could pick up the phone and call you, so much of me wants to, but the fear of you not picking up, the fear of you picking up and realizing I don't know what to say, is enough to curb my greatest desires. I've always been a coward in that way, and you've always been too proud. But I ask the universe when I will be free of your smile and your laugh and the feeling of your fingertips against my wrist, I beg it to stop planting you in my dreams, to please let me rest. But I also know that once you leave my dreams, you leave me for good. And as insane as it is, the only thing keeping me from missing you so bad I can't breathe is knowing that at night, when everything is quiet and the world sleeps, we will meet in my dreams. And maybe one day I won't need to see the ghost of you in my mind to keep myself from running back to you, but right now the only place you can haunt me is my mind, and I just can't let you go yet. Meet me in between the moon and the stars, my love. It's there that we can finally rest and just be.