How Would We Ever Know?

It’s your birthday. I don’t even know how long it has been but I cannot stop thinking of the freedom we had. Back when we only cared about running, back when the water from dew on our feet was the most chilling thing we felt. How do I deafen the screams of a love? How do you not miss who I became when I was with you? How you made me feel like a different person? How you loved me with a fierce force of thunder and lighting, all sound, light and love. How can you forget how good I used to make you feel? How eager our hands were for each other, how quick our feet… Jumping two steps at a time. There are so many things I knew would go wrong if we would continue, it would strain our backs from the weight of distance, but what a glorious love, what an endless feeling. I’m scared of saying things but saying things is how I let go of fear.

Your laughter still blooms in my head

So, tell me? This convoluted feeling. Will I ever get rid of it?

Will I ever recover from your crisp tenderness? Will I ever recover from days we called ‘adventures’? Will I ever let go of you? Of your eyes blinking tears of separation? Will I ever recover from hurting you?

There is so much I want to say, but I’ve been scared of saying it for too long now. I don’t know if you’d even want to hear it, or if you ever even thought I would have something to say. There is so much, there was always so much, we were so saturated with ourselves, so raw and honest in our experience, no plans, just love and play. Just ease and comfort, home and warmth. Now what do I do? I’ve been seeking you for so long. I’ve lied it so deep in my heart my pain is swelling and here are all the words that were trying to burst from it so long ago. I miss you, in the distant but severely intimate way only a Sufjan Stevens’ song can exist. There is so much I felt I never wanted to let it go, but then you left, I left you. There is no blame to shift here, we did it to each other and that’s the one thing I’m proud of. We gave each other space, and now that space makes me miss you even more. I pray you don’t remember what we were, I pray you’re with someone who makes you so unbelievably happy… But I wish in the dark corners of the comforter when no one is with you, you miss me too. I hope you miss me when you make chocolate chip cookies, I wish you miss how easy it was, being us. I wish you miss me with a stubborn ache, like a tag in your tee shirt scratching at your neck. I don’t care how you miss me, that is your business, All I want is for you to miss. I just want you to miss me, even if you’re unbelievably happy. Just like I miss you, just like I miss who we were, carefree, careless and so in love, so proud, such artists with our love. I wish you miss how easy it was to wake up next to you and start a day and how I ached for you beside my bed, a shadow I didn’t know could exist, weighing my chest down without your head on it. I remember. I remember. I remember.

I remember how easy it was for you to grab my hand to push me for adventures. I remember my laughter blooming with yours. How when you laughed, you laughed in a small way and then when you let it go and laughed with me with an echo of happiness I’d never seen before. I loved you more deeply than I’d loved anyone for a reason. I’d never felt this adored for who I was. You made me feel alive, you made me want to live more. You made me want to run, to walk more, to skip steps on stairs. You made me wonder how I could know such diverse kinds of loves and how was possible to love someone so sensibly, and yet so carelessly. How did you make these two words sit in the same sentence for me? How did you smudge a new colour on my heart, one I never thought could exist… That is now smudged on my body and soul.

And if you’re here reading this? Will you ever recover from me? Will you cherish me and our memories? or laugh at the ugly lines I creased in your life? Will you miss? or let yourself be missed?

Will you ever love again? Or let me be buried like a cemented shadow, always in your mind.

I remember everything darling, I remember till I smile with ache and longing and fondness. You’re art in my head, your hands swirl new colours in me, your kisses blooming sparks of soft feeling.

Happy birthday, here’s to more adventures to decorate your life like water flows, filling up all corners. I wish for your smiles to multiply and ease into happier days.

That is all I do… I remember, my love. I remember it all.