The message I’ll never send to you
Hey, It’s me again. I don’t dream about you no more and it makes me sad. It’s a long time since you were gone. Even longer since you stopped loving me, if you ever loved me. Maybe I got the signs wrong. I was just your best friend all along. But I loved you from the first time I heard about you. The cute, athletic, nerd with curls that drives all the 7th grader girls mad. I was breathing your name for many years, now it’s a rare cough. I barely know my own name. I muddle through Life incognito, only ever arousing interest in others when I am not myself, when I am more like you. I could never be as charismatic as you are. You don’t even believe you have it in you, but I do believe. I never stopped loving you. I only made it look like it. Other guys, no guys. Ego and pain, weak distractions. But it was too late for you to care. I was just a friend all along.
I daydream about you, you know. I picture the life we could have had together. Us newly married, on a Sunday morning, a warm light passing through the linen curtain (they were cheap), our bodies intertwined, the mattress still on the floor, months after we’d moved in. Maybe you’d kiss me first today, on my right eye. I’d smile at you and stretch, asking you in Marge Simpson’s voice: “what time is it?”. “08:30. I’m going to make coffee, do you want one” “Only if it’s a…” “…long black, no sugar, with a splash of milk. I got it, love”. Yeah, you’d call me love. It would tingle and resonate in my ears. I’d feel loved and I’d be told as to never doubt it again.
There’s this question that keeps me awake at night. Why’d you ever care for me? What am I to you ? Why would you message me after all these years ? Is it boredom or did those French girls from your college you stay in late with turn out to be not as entertaining as you expected ? Am I just a bridge to your past life, nothing but a flash disk that keeps all the good old days in your mother land in memory, so that you can free your mind ? I’ve always admired how you loved everyone but I don’t like it. You don’t make me feel special. You make me feel like I’m all brains and none hearts. You make me feel like an empty can rolling in the wind. Not your fault. All mine. I’m the one holding on onto your ethereal body. You’re not real. I love you better in my mind. Maybe when I love myself, I’ll let you go. Until then, I keep replaying the sounds and images of us, both real and imaginary, numbing my senses slowly to sleep.
