Stars & Fingertips

Your Passenger Seat

Forgive me.

May 3rd, one day and one year after the first time, came the tenth.

Yesterday came the eleventh, on the eleventh of May.

Prom was on May 2nd, a different day than the year before. I woke up to a panic attack; I woke up to the fact that you were gone. My mind came up with lies and notions that this was okay and that it would be alright, but I had only been trying to keep myself from collapsing, from my chest con-caving in on my emptiness.

So I reached out to him.

He was there and he was comforting and he had told me that it was okay and that I was strong. Days earlier I fell asleep on the phone with him, the sound of our breaths over the receiver - a small echo of the love that was beginning to blossom. Like a rose on a warm summer day, we were vibrant and everything was painted a deep shade of red.

Yet the night of May 2nd, or perhaps the morning of May 3rd, the rose I had planted with him had died, wilted and the petals had fallen to the ground. The deep red had seeped from the core and I was left trying to put the petals back together to make my beautiful rose again.

Tears upon tears had fallen from my eyes and I stood looking at my wilted, torn apart flower. There was no effort by him to plant a new and it would never be enough. As I left my tarnished single rose garden I had thought of you.

So I reached out to you.

You pulled up and parked in your usual spot and waited for me. I sat in your passenger seat and tears streamed down my cheeks. I cried into your neck as your arm held me firmly and your fingers intertwined with mine. I shook and I sobbed and you just held me like it was what you were meant to do.

After I calmed down we talked and we laughed and you said your remarkable eleven-liner: "Is it bad that I want to kiss you right now?"

The first time you had uttered these words to me I had been backstage and the lights were absent. I stood in all of my innocence as your lips were a mere second away from mine.

And then, May 2nd.

And now, May 3rd. May 3rd, I sat there in your passenger seat and thought back to the fall. I had been in this same position but time and life had changed so drastically the life I knew had not even been mine. Last fall I had sat there and made the decision to stay, to fight for you no matter what would happen. May 3rd these feelings remained, yet the difference is that I could not say or do anything to change your mind. My lips pressed against yours and our bare bodies pressed against each other was not enough. Telling you how I had felt was not enough. Crying over the thought of you ever being in pain or hating yourself was not enough. This is something that I do not understand because how could you ever hate someone who was the definition of love and perfection and everything I could ever want? How can you look at yourself in the mirror and not see everything that I would give up my freedom for? My heart for?

But yet again, how can you look at me and see someone that you love, yet is not enough? How can you have these feelings for me yet go home to her and remain happy with a girl who would not kill for the opportunity to be yours again?

How can you function like this?

I do not understand you; I do not understand. I understand the laws of physics, I understand prepositions and imperfect tenses, I understand trigonometry and the law of cosines, I understand the circle of fifths but for the life of me I cannot understand you.

It drives me crazy.

It drives me almost as crazy as the fact that I cannot have you,

Crazier than it makes me that I had you and lost you.

And that is something I will never understand.