You remember the first time you saw
her, staring in your general direction. You remember the
feeling you got when you first saw her, staring in your general direction.
How is it that so many things change in a year? How is it that a year becomes such a short time through the course of our life? The first time your mother gave you the choice to spend time in "time out" over getting a spanking, the hour you spent in your room seemed like an eternity in oblivion... An imaginary line lie at the foot of the door, keeping you from leaving. Did you die?
You remember the first time you thought lightning hit your spine. Up and down and back and forth, I think it's the confusion the brain is going through when you see someone you thought was dead. Millions of thoughts cross your mind in a super-excited, raw, plasmatic state. The general direction of the thoughts seem to be gravitating towards the idea that you should go talk to her and try to get her number.
In a flurry of hot water running down my face (tears or sweat?), I remember the words. I'm still there, with her sitting on my chest, holding my hand to her heart. In that moment the acute consciousness of reality appeared to haze into the convolution of reality.
You still remember her telling you she loves you, back.
The good times, the in-between times. Every time seemed to be magical, in some way, shape, or form. I guess one can only imagine her sitting there in her car, crying, because the one she loves is a lifetime away.
Do you remember how your lives continued as you lived apart, and together at the same time? The unpredictable state of affairs lingered, as the union decays under the pressure of distance. All distance is, is time? Most certainly you remember the first time you came home and things weren't quite the same.
Under the weight of life, how can anything last?
The better life lie just ahead, the summer is merely around the corner. The promise land is at hand. However, you remember as things only continue to fall apart, into the eventual separation that devastated your will to survive.
In the interim, I discovered the greater meaning of situational impossibilities. We only lived an hour and a half apart, but as college kids each working a job or two, we might as well have lived an ocean apart. With one last encounter that served to set the record straight, we set off in our different ways. Do you remember the last time you ever looked into her, heard her tell you her life will never be the same?
The long nights are what I remember. You can control what you think about during the day, but when dreams haunt you sleep becomes burdensome. Eventually you take on a second job and work out at the gym, four times a week. Something about the breaking and building smoothes the roughness around the edges.
"Let's do lunch,” is all she says when you meet her again (A different time, a different life). It's an order of business. What's changed? Her eyes, they look the same... but now there's nothing left to be said. Reduced to a date in a planner, penciled in no less.
You shed a silent tear on the pillow of their bed while they aren’t looking. They sleep on your tears, and they’ll never know.
It's terrible when you don't know what to say to someone that you used to not have to say anything to, at all.