you were my sunshine

o4*

WHEN I AWOKE, DEAR, I WAS MISTAKEN / SO I HUNG MY HEAD AND I CRIED

the tears came when you visited me thirteen months after you moved. throughout the months before that, we had kept in touch, refusing to sleep until we've heard each other's voices. it was difficult, listening to your voice over the phone when all i really wanted was to hold you tight against me just like before while we unsuccessfully waited for a shooting star.

i don't know why i didn't notice it earlier. the absence of your usual humor, the air that hung thickly between us as we spoke over the phone, the consistent please leave a message and the growing static that i had soon become accustomed to. i never found any of those suspicious; i brushed it off as you being busy, so i gave you your space. i told myself again and again that there's no reason for me to have doubts, because we promised each other that we would always be together, that you and i could surpass the vast distance between us, that...

that we were enough.

when you came back, i thought you would embrace me, tell me you love me over and over, swear you'd stay here forever and never leave again.

as i've said, you were always full of surprises.

our eyes met for the first time in over a year, but you didn't smile. i stood there like a fool, waiting as you took tentative steps towards me, as if the few feet from me to you stretched into the miles that separated us permanently.

that's when i realized that there was something wrong. up close and in person, i saw what the problem was. you smiled at me, the way you did the first time we met, but it didn't feel genuine; there was no warmth in it. there was only guilt.

"hey," i said, feigning nonchalance. i ignored the uncanny pit forming in my stomach. i just wanted to feel your heart beating against mine once more, hear about the millions of stories you've had and tell you millions of my own. i chose to remain naive and convinced myself that almost nothing has changed with you, just like nothing has changed with me. i was wrong, of course, because you changed - a lot more than i expected you to.

"i'm so sorry," you told me.

at that moment, i knew. i knew what you were going to say afterwards, i knew everything down to how exactly the words would roll from your tongue. even then, i pretended i didn't know. i still hoped that i was wrong. i hoped that the you and i from the year before would still be the you and i in the present.

for the first time since i'd known you, the words you said next were words i had already expected.

"i found someone else."

if only the goddamn shooting star showed up earlier.