There was a moment I sat anxiously in coffee houses, swallowing uneasiness and the incapacitated reminiscence of what once was my pride. With fingers dangling above a MacBook keyboard, I wondered when creativity would avalanche into my mind and you would vanish beneath the whiteness of something significantly greater.
I’ve never considered myself a fragile romantic.
Of course, I had my fair share of pity parties, over cups of vodka and sprite in restrooms of bars and houses just as murky as my untamable perceptions of love and lust.
But there was a hot minute I missed you as much as I need my house key back after I left it in the passenger seat of the Ford Explorer you never quite have the time to clean out–despite having enough time to waste time of my own.
I wonder if your clueless friends ever wonder where the brass key came from, their Budweiser-obsessed and Ciroc-celebrating brains still incapable of recognizing the genuineness of my infatuation toward you. They will float further through this universe, dressed in Patagonia fleeces and tragic misconceptions of my reputation, without the slightest clue of how sincerely I praised you.
You neglect to tell them about your hour-long drives to my house during the summer, where you greeted my mother and refused to make a comment about how much I look like her.
In your cynical mind, I exist as the unjustifiable spirit, made more hauntingly cruel by thinking so fondly of you and placing you on a pedestal probably too high for such poor character.
My vulnerability is categorized as an experience, fleeting and most likely bothersome like the makeup I had to scrub off my face and the bedsheets you tangled up.
You take memories of us as though they were Polaroid photographs and destroy them in a bonfire ignited by my inabilities to exist within the white picket fences of your judgments and unreachable expectations. Although I thought they were beautiful, they’re now quite embarrassing.
I’m left behind in greater disapproval of myself than you, for precipitously begging to attain the love of an individual enveloped by arrogance.
Other women hung above my head like icy diamond necklaces, shimmering in a light kissed by vanilla and accepted by your community.
Dressed in shirts I could never fit into, with Christian crosses dangling from their necks, Travis Scott lyrics slipping from their lips and packed bowls of recreational marijuana in their hands, they thrive as vibrant women legitimately worthy of the love I was aspiring to achieve.
I would flip my hair for you and giggle bubbly at your recurrent critiques and harsh comments I believed were harmless.
“The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway is stuck being my favorite book, even though I originally made the purchase to impress you.
You didn’t want to talk about it to avoid giving me “the wrong idea,” because clearly sleeping together in childhood homes and analyzing our secret philosophies was way less intimate.
My dirty blonde hair turned platinum and the summer rain we once traveled under transitioned into premature blizzards, and inevitably my loving turned to the most bitter, discomforting loathing.
So as we pass each other on an empty stairwell, I am left wondering if I will ever be reimbursed for all of this wasted time?