as i laid awake counting my ribs, i tried to recapture the planes of his face and the sound of his voice saying my name and the way his body felt around mine and every little moment we had together, but it was like a mirage. i reached out my hand and it all crumbled dissipated blew away around me. i tried i tried i tried. i laid awake and tried to imagine what it would be like if my phone buzzed with the sound of an incoming text and i looked to see, heart beating out my throat, that it was his name and he would say hi and i would reply and we would talk and he would try to worm his way back into my life and i can’t quite tell what i would do, if i would push him away or let him back in. i have a sinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, my seventeen year old heart would drown out with a desperate pounding all my brain's screams of rationality. oh trust me, it kills me absolutely kills me to still be so starstruck and living life gilded in forgotten fantasy, that his name would haunt my deepest memories and his face would appear in my dreams. sometimes i think it’s a sign. sometimes i think i just need more healing. and sometimes i don’t know what to think except i miss you and i hope you’re thinking of me. it’s my heart’s secret song, sacred nightmare, and i’m plunged back into swirls of happiness like the ice cream he bought me but meanwhile i’m blue. just out of grasp – first kisses and hugs and hand-holding like he’s madly in love and he’d never let me go, and in my alternate universe he loves me he loves me so, but in reality hindsight’s a fucking bitch and i don’t think he cares about me. or does he? i don’t know what to think. in my weakest weakest moments, when i lie on the cold hard floor alone in the middle of the night and feel my heart aching and i cry, i’m lost in my head and i want to reach out and say hey. i miss you. call me. but i don’t, by some miracle, and i fall into dreamful sleep and dream of him. i hate it. it feels like he never left. not that first time. nor the second. nor all the times after, again and again and again. am i too stuck in this fever dream? it feels like the part of me that craves self-destruction is trying desperately to draw me back to him because he’s absolutely no good for me and would only lead to my ruin. god it’s all a haze, but in my dreams we would dance around and i’d laugh and giggle and nothing hurts and time doesn’t exist even though the amount of time we’ve been apart is now longer than we ever were together, and i’m a different person now, but i’m still the same old hopeless romantic me. wide-eyed optimism and fearless belief in bright glowing futures still abound within me. with every moment that ticks by with nary a sign of him reaching out, i despair, even though it’s wrong it’s sin it’s everything i shouldn’t be feeling. does he even still think about me? is it wrong if i wish he did? i feel like lightning and i’m burning. heretical desire sets me aflame. heresy. that’s the word now, isn’t it? to sum up everything i’m feeling. i wish i wish i wish i wish i wish i wish i wish. i don’t know if i fell in love, but i know i didn’t fall out of it. and is it really so fucking wrong of me to wish he would wake up and see that maybe in his deepest most secret heart he actually really fucking loves me? but of course he doesn’t. he didn’t. but why can’t i remember that? it’s like i’m dangling off a cliff on a tightrope and my grip’s slipping, and i’m falling and it feels so fucking much like the very beginning. as if time were rewinding to let me live again. and this time i’d do it right. this time we’d do it right. this time he’d do me right. maybe i just wish that i could see his face once again, just once more, because right now all i have are hypotheticals and that’s the thing about them, they’re just wishful fancies, and you never know how you’ll act until the moment’s upon you and you can run away or you can take a deep breath and say everything you need to say. that’s the thing about not having closure. that’s the thing about blacking someone out of the landscape of your life. you’re left with smudged ink on paper and skin and you’re staring at it thinking wondering how it all could have been. if you’d had a little more time. a little more things to say. and you wonder oh you fucking wonder how two years could have changed a person, how two years would look on the canvas now. maybe it's a glorified monet. you remember the sparks that charged the air and the frissons of heat that would run rollercoasters through your veins and you remember softness and warmth but you also remember late night crying and breaking hearts. but it’s all jumbled up into one big tangled mess of itwaseverythingandnothinganditcouldhavebeensomethingifonlyifonlyifonlyifonly. you thought you had moved on. foolish as ever. you’d just buried it all so deep that it took two years for the demons to break through your walls and come crawling back and howling for blood. so now you dream about him every so often and you’re making up all these scenarios in your mind where you casually bump into him out and about or he reaches out to you or he shows up at your door with bated breath and words that spin a grand tale of how he misses you and wants you. you’re dreaming of him trying to get you back and you believe that it’s a sign. but what if it’s all just in your mind? oh wouldn’t freud have a fucking field day with this? a mess of a dreamer indeed. you dreamed your way into it and now you can’t dream a way out. why the hell do you even want him anyways? why the fuck do you still think he’s beautiful like all your wishes come to hypnotic life? you yearn to hear his voice say your name again and you yearn for him to yearn for you. but it’s all just a rose haze. take all your what-ifs and throw them away like you did your pictures together and his clothes. like he did your heart and every beautiful thing that fate could have foretold. it’s indelible idiocy. stupid, stupid girl.
