What felt like ages ago, but is only an arms length in years, I fell in love with her. I fell in love with her gummy smile, her bad poetry, her brutal honesty in the worst situations, and her deep want for good. I found that in every way to me, she appeared beautiful. Every moment spent with her was like a sliver of summers from my childhood. The sun felt brighter, the grass felt greener, and the air more crisp. I lost myself in her laughter and danced in her glances. She was everything I thought a first love should be.
But sometimes love isn't fluid, it's a stream blocked by pebbles, then rocks, then boulders, until it ends in the slightest trickle. And that's what happened to me. I watched as our differences pushed us apart, then our friends, and then every one of the people she seemed to choose over me. Through it all though, she confessed me her feelings in hushed whispers. How I was the most beautiful person she'd ever seen, how my depth of soul was just so vast, how she wished she wasn't in a relationship. Her words felt like an ocean, but her actions whittled my love to the weakest brook.
We met again a year ago, now she had dark eye makeup and wore a thin jean jacket in cold autumn air. I wore my hair unkempt and a long winter coat. We were two different people, in two different places. She said she was sorry for the choices she made to push me away, I said I could forget them. I told her how I'd changed my hair, my clothes, my morals. She looked at me in awe, but the look fell from her face when I told her my biggest change: him. I told her I loved him, that I freely lost myself in his laughter and danced in his glances. I told her of the future I envisioned with him, and I watched as her soul crept from her eyes. I finally saw myself in her; the look of painful longing, the small smile of half-hearted support.
I thought about the what-ifs, if she had given me that look years ago when I had begged for it. But maybe, I was just imagining it. Maybe her joy didn't fail, maybe her soul didn't dim, maybe she was truly happy for me. Maybe at last, the last pebble had fallen to leave myself in a much needed drought. But any which maybe I might spin, I'll still miss the days when the water ran heavy and the sun seemed to kiss us with freckles.
