dreamland

seventeen

I didn't sleep so that I wouldn't have to dream.

Everything felt very slow, the sleet falling on my roof, my best friend's voice as she returned my coat and asked over and over again what you were doing here.

I didn't know what say but I had a feeling that it had to do with you and I. It suddenly felt like the time after your departure never actually occurred. It was like I was still stuck in the same spot; too shocked to even think or cry.
There were differences that I couldn't ignore, no one could.

After she stopped asking the question, she asked me about him.
His name almost sounded foreign to me because the one going through my mind, in fast centripetal motions, was yours.

She waited and said, you like him, remember, with her hands at her sides, helpless.

His face and his eyes and the night, the moments before you came and stole everyone's attention, came to me softly but even so it felt like a picture from someone else's memory.
We didn't say anything after that and we didn't call or text after that either.
There was something so strange occurring that I couldn't explain.
I couldn't even explain the fact that I kept looking out my window every morning and every afternoon and every evening.
I stayed that way for three days after.
I would wake up, my face clean and bright from the shower and eat my cereal right in the kitchen with the curtains drawn.
And every night before bed I would stay awake, looking up at my ceiling and listening as cars neared my house. I'd hold my breath every time so that I could hear the slow sound of your engine shutting off.

It didn't come and I began to think that I had imagined you. Or that perhaps you hadn't even come here for me. That the person you'd been scanning the crowd was for someone else.
When I let the idea slip into my mind; the one that whispered what if he was looking for her, I hate to say that it really hurt.

And then you came, in broad daylight which was even more surprising than your ubiety itself.

I'd come back from my run in which I stumbled into him.
He was leaving the garden store across the street, holding a brown paper bag that hid whatever he had purchased.
He stopped when he saw me and he didn't say anything, he only stared at me as I kept moving and ignored him. I kept running, ignoring his stature just across the street.
I didn't know what to say to him.
I didn't know what to even think of him.
Even so a part of me felt he deserved an explanation, like if I was committed to him. Which I wasn't.
Whatever was going on between the two of us seemed so irrelevant like all those formulas I'd learned in high school.

I saw you and my first thought was that I hoped you thought I was still pretty after all this time.
It was stupid that I chose to worry about that instead of everything else.
Anything else.

You stood and looked right into my eyes with a certain determination.
You knew exactly why you had returned and why you were standing right in my driveway.

I swallowed, I was so thirsty but I didn't want to go inside. I wanted to talk to you in broad daylight for all to see.

You said hey to me without a smile.

I said it back and my voice sounded tiny and shy.
But I shouldn't have been shy.
Why would I be?
Why were my ears suddenly so hot?
I shouldn't have felt something unsettling in my stomach.

You said to me that I'd been the first person you wanted to see when you arrived.

I think my jealously, and insecurity from the past took over and invaded the conversation.
It stepped right in and broke the quiet and bit of shyness I felt.
I asked you if that was actually the truth.