Wallflower

KNOW ME

The life you always thought you wanted before you knew any different. The sea change you didn't see coming, the sweeping vistas and cotton candy sunsets. The meeting point between how you imagines it would be and how it has transpired. The willingness to take a chance on something that could take you somewhere new. The dream you were persuaded to give up on, or the one that you were coaxed into following. Who you love and who loves you back determines so much in your life.

It was one of those nights that you are not altogether sure, really did happen. There are no photographs, no receipts, no scrawled journal entries. Just the memory sitting in my mind, like a half blown dandelion, waiting to be fractured, dismembered. Waiting to disintegrate into nothing. When I close my eyes, the pictures play like a blurry montage. I can see us driving for hours, until the street signs grew less familiar - the flickers lamplights giving away to stars. Then sitting across from you in the quiet, little Italian place. Your hands pushing the plates aside, reaching across for mine.

The conversations we had about everything and nothing. And kissing you. How I remember that. It was of one of those nights that my mind still can't be sure of. That wonders if I was ever there at all. Yet in my hearts, it feels as though I've never left.

I have moved so far away from you that  I have become a myth; a lie you tell yourself each night. I am the one true thing you have held in the palm of your hand, the key to everything you wanted.

Your name smiles at me from a crumpled envelope, addressed to the past, unsent and unseen. Inside there is a letter where I tell you a story about the moon, how night after the darkness carved at the pale curve of her body until she became half of the woman she was.

There is a word that hurts my heart - one I don't ever say out loud. Like the shadow that lingers in the light, I can't separate myself from your memory. But there are some nights when I look up into the sky, and the moon is whole again. Perhaps.

I was ready to give it all up - everything. I was half out of my mind with love. And I didn't think twice about what I was throwing into the fire, as long as I could keep it burning for just another minute - if only I was allowed to sit awhile longer beside its pale glow.

That was how I loved you in the end. With my body cold and shuddering. With empty hands over smouldering ash, counting out the minutes.

................................................................................................................................................................

There was a man who I once knew,

for me there was no other.

The closer to loving me he grew,

the more he would grow further.

I tried to love him as a friend,

then to love him as his lover;

but he never loved me in the end -

his heart was for another.

I remember when I met you,

the hands of time stood still;

you and your camera smile -

a flash of something real.