Do you remember when we were thirteen and I stole four cigarettes from my dad's girlfriend? You told me not to blacken my lungs. You told me not slowly kill myself with the disgusting combonation of tobacco, tar, and nicotine. You told me not to smoke, but I did anyway. I smoked because I was bored, and because I was lonely. Even when you were there I still felt the slow maturing of the hole in my heart today.
I still wonder to this day if I had not started smoking if you would still be here with me. Still going to the pub on Saturdays, still trying to drag me out of bed before eleven on Sundays, and still trying to convince me that all of the holes I put in my skin and all the tattoos, I etched on onto my body would eventually make me die from regret. Lamentably, i'm still converting oxegen into carbon dioxide and listening to the slow thump of my heart marching in my chest. It's selfish of me but, I wish I could listen to the bird-like drumming of your heart. Just one more time.
What if I had fallen in love with you? Well, if I had realized sooner that I was in love. I guess I had grown attached to the way you'd change into nothing but my band t-shirts and wake me up by bouncing on my chest. You'd lay your head on my chest and tell me about your musings on magical flower fields and the mountains you would climb. You told me you'd climb the mountains that shook hands with the clouds and call me from the top. I'd grown used to those mornings spent basking in the sunlight that pooled in through the curtains in my studio apartment and I guess that might have been tip toeing the border of friendship and something more. If I had realized sooner that I was being stupid and that I should have kissed you more than I already was and actually tried to take you out on a simple date, you might not be laying six feet under in this small and grey graveyard. You might be waking me up everyday in the tshirt I was wearing the night before and talked about philosophy. What if I had taken action on the fact that you were withering away before my eyes and wilting like a daisy in the winter.
It wasn't fair of me to to ignore you when you were emotional over your boyfriend and, huh, I guess you were cheating on him with me this whole time. But that's beside the point. I should have noticed that you were begging me to notice your despair and tha fact the you were slowly unravling like my kickboxing bandages. And yeah, maybe I did notice that you cried in the middle of the night when you thought I didn't notice. I noticed. I swear, Ellie, I noticed. I just wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to to hear and disuss your problems with him. I wasn't ready to get past my selfish desires and fantasies of you, so I ignored you and let you suffer in silence just like everyone else.
I remember when you came over to my flat bawling your eyes out because you got fired from your job. I wanted to march in and cuss everyong who had even given you the wrong look. Granted you did work at a Christian church and I swore i'd never step foot in there, but I did want to beat up whoever fired you because that job got you to make me homemade french toast on friday mornings.
That all aside, I'm still here smoking, I'm still wearing band tshirts, and i'm still here slowly wasting my life that's going nowhere. The one thing that has changed is my empty bed and lonely heart. So here I am today. Paying my respects and crying over your plot because I was an Idiot. But that won't bring you back. That doesn't change the fact that I wish I wasn't an ass to you and that I wish you were back here with me. Nagging about my smoking and telling me about mountains.
Ellie the dreamer...
Ellie the Philospher...
Ellie the girl with an ass of a best friend who didn't even come to the funeral...
Find someone who is worth your while to climb those mountains for because I'm not it.
