The Second Chapter

Oceans- June 4, 2019

One bungalow away. Not more than 100 feet separating us. You're lying in bed, I'm assuming, but at this point I don't know. Because the man lying in bed 100 feet away from me is someone I don't know- a stranger living in the body of the man that I love. He talks and walks the same, his laughs sound the same, the only noticeable feature telling me there is an alien inhabitant is the smile. It doesn't reach his eyes. Those beautiful, galaxy eyes. And the smiles aren't full- they're small, meek, and I can see behind those tight lips that there are words left unsaid. A whole novel worth of words. Maybe they're admissions of guilt, maybe they're full of desperation and forgiveness, maybe I'm completely wrong and they're full of nothing. Just an empty chasm, black and pitiless, easy to fall into but impossible to escape.

Yet despite the stranger, the false smiles, the dim eyes, I still want you. With every rise and fall of my chest, I wish to breath the love I feel for you into your very soul. With every move I make I hope to position myself to look as desirable to you as possible. A montage plays on a near endless track in my mind, even the smallest of things reminding me of you. I wish to project this small cinematic masterpiece from my mind to yours. Bright scenes painted a stunning yellow, a gorgeous man filling the frame as warm yellow sunlight reflects off his sunglasses as he turns, smiling to face me. Dark scenes, heavy with humidity and lust as we watch two people kiss and grab desperately for one another against a wooden railing, surrounded by shadowed trees. Then, a car. A pale face streaked by tears, desperation filling his eyes as he swears he wishes things were different. And across from him, a woman, her hands gripping a steering wheel, her nails digging into the fine leather as she tries to grasp onto anything to keep from falling away with the earth crumbling beneath her feet.

Then nothingness. Numbness.

The scenes run one by one, a year of them stacked in no clear order, pulled from memory in a haphazard way in my mind. I try to remind myself of the man in the happy ones. The man who loves to kiss me and show me off, the man who thought even when I did wrong it was cute instead of irritating. The man whose arms were warm and inviting with a chest I would rest my head on- a chest that quickly and easily became home.

That body, that man, lays mere feet from me. Close enough that I could crawl into bed with him and no one would be the wiser. Close enough that when my heart aches, I imagine he can feel it throbbing and calling out for him desperately. A man whose mind is full of the same memories as me, of a time when our love for one another knew no limits and just kept going.

SO close.

So painfully close.

I hold him near on my phone,

I wrap my arms around my teddy bear, dressed in his clothes.

I picture him laying on his stomach, mouth open, with soft snores coming out.

Feet away.

One bungalow.

Yet so painfully far away that my heart breaks and shatters, shakes and crumbles, burns to ash only to catch fire again.

So close.

But still so far away.

I want my love back. I want the man I know back. But I don't know how to find him, let alone coax him back to me.

Your body is close, B.

And maybe your heart is too. But your mind? It is so, so far away.

It's my hope that if I distance myself, purposefully take the wrong path, that you'll find me somewhere along my journey. That we're inevitable. Meant to be. But that's impossible to know when the you I know only makes an appearance around me, and you're avoiding me at all costs.

Come back to me.

Please.

Please please please.

With love now and always,

xxx