It's your world I live inside.

I think it dawned on me today that I'm never really going back. And if I push myself to let go...

You lay in my memory, pristine. I turn the pages back more times than you think, soldier boy. You're like paper left in the sun too long, bleached and warped. Tossed out, but the space you once were an echo to your existence. Oh, god. It terrifies me to think I may have to relive that pain. That anyone around me might fall down sick and leave only a trace; such a feeble testament to meaning. I am the keeper of your best years. Just when I think I'm close to forgiving, infinity...you are the space between 99 and 100.

Tick tock.

Again, to you.

Do you ever wish that
We'd met
In a field of flowering poppies?
Do you think that
maybe it make
things a whole lot different?
The truth is that
You were much lovelier
Than I've ever given you credit for.

This healing.

To be honest, I'm not terribly sure what kind of girl I am anymore. I'm not sure where my bigger purpose is. It is so easy to inspired when the possibilities play on your fingers and their tips touch fire. It's always an adjustment, getting back to the real world. There's very little instant gratification here. Time moves a lot slower but somehow we're all aging faster, and that's fine, facing your own mortality and stuff. But I want to be bigger. 

I can't help but think I was more peaceful by your side. More centered, more spiritual. But I was clinging to grudges then that I've let go of now. It's ok to be ok. I'm not defined by my struggles, and I don't need common ground to empathize. I can transcend my past. I am happier, and more in the moment. But somehow less in tune, less connected. I'd like to change that. Thanks for showing me that side of myself. 

Three years have passed since I lost you. I wonder where you are a lot. My imagination has a tendency to go too far, and I imagine you clinging to the telephone hundreds of miles away, in some dingy carpeted hallway, memorizing my number as they take you away. Do you ever think about me? Do you ever think about the summer we spent on your couch, watching that taxi cab game show and making quesadillas and going for runs in humid air that drenched us so our clothes stuck to our skin? Do you ever think about losing charlie, or watermelon on the back porch, or fireworks on fourth of July? Sometimes I think its better to get lost in those memories than imagine you now. Or our last conversations. We were so beautifully terrible, but I think I've stopped blaming you. I lay back, breaking up with a memory. I know you came back for me, that October after I moved. I know you wandered around the streets of Atlanta in the cold until I called your parents to come find you. He never asks about any of those memories. But I never, never talk about you. He probably doesn't even know. That's not his fault. Maybe its mine. Maybe he doesn't want to know. He has healed me in ways you never knew you broke me. I'm ok now.

you

I miss you.
I hate you too. For not calling. For leaving me.
I wish I still had your voice at night, laughing into my pillow in the middle of the night, afraid the neighbors would hear.
I didn't forget your fucking birthday. That was a dumb excuse to say I didn't care. If you still think of me at all. I only wanted to make you as mad as you've made me. And I cling to that to keep from reaching out.

brain.

Be interesting. Be kind. Be liked, walk a straight line. 

Thursday.

Since you've been gone I've been plagues by what if's...questions with answers that can only be found far into the future. But there is something unhappy in me lately. I feel like I am not sure where my future lies. I am here, again, trying to decide what to do next. I keep thinking about saving money, maybe for a house. Maybe for some kids, or a trailer and a last ditch tour around the country before we settle. I think that would make me happy. Traveling alongside you, having a kid, being a mom. But maybe I'm not living up to my full potential? What was that education for? I want to do something big too, but I've been hurting, every, damn, day. Waiting. For the right time, when right now life feels so cluttered and these tiny rooms so claustrophobic and my heart empty.
I think now I am still, my existence feels...purposeless. I am ambivalent to so many futures. My soul not drawn to any one over the other. Most people say I am crazy to want what I want. More often I find myself holding other people's children as their parents squirm away to do their important things, and holding back. But I long to love. I think anyone who has known it would say the drive to become a mother is a feeling like a need, like thirst or hunger, a creeping coldness that knocks the wind out of you suddenly. I dont know the right answer. So we smile and think maybe next year and say but your still so young and yes, yes, that's true, but right now I'm only persevering and what I really want to do is live and be happy.

Rain.

"Grey", she whispers, "I don't think you should do that."
Maybe it's the way she says it, the wariness of her tone, the subtle whine in her voice, but something about that sentence makes me want to squeeze her. Squeeze her until she pops like a balloon. I let the frustration wash over me, a thousand tiny raindrops that cascade between over my temples and in between the folds of my shirt, down my legs and out out out of me, through my toes. Then it's over.
That holy moment hangs between us, thick and suspenseful. An eternity. But even as the echo of her voice bounces off the walls of the cavern to my rest between my ears for a second time, I lift my head over my shoulder and throw her a half smile. The spell is broken. I've reassured her. She lets out the breath she had been holding.
"Go sit outside if you are afraid. I will come get you when I find it."
I lean back, daring her to follow. For a second she falters, frozen at the crux of pride and instinct, both such stubborn vices. Then, with a twist of her heel, she walks quickly back out to the mouth of the cave and sits, beginning to run her fingers over dark hair. She lifts her voice in a thin, reedy song, and the birds sing their harmonies and watch her from high above in their tall jungle trees. She's better off there, I think to myself.
I have work to do.