Before I forget.

I used to write all the time.

I’d sit down and conjure up page after page after page of you, for you, and through you.

I wrote them all — poems, stories, plays.

So many half-verses, imaginary conversations of acceptance and warmth filled the pages all those years ago.

The stories were always fake, of course.

You were nowhere to be found, only in my head. So my mind and the pages were filled with silly dreams. One-sided hopes craved by myself alone.

I would sit by myself on the right bank of the river, vacantly staring in the distance, longing with all my small innocent heart that I could conjure up the future I was craving for at that time.

where I wrote

Since I never managed to wish my dreams into reality, I had to leave the bank at some point.

I couldn’t get stuck there, in that story that would’ve never been true.

And I went on with my days and my sunsets and I lived and I laughed and I (sometimes) loved but mostly I grew into my face and into my mind and I found out who I am.

And the springs became autumns and the years passed and I could no longer write of you and for you and through you, and I closed that door and never thought of opening it again.

You remained just a bittersweet core memory. Like the time I jumped off the bunk bed’s headboard and sprained my ankle.

how I breathe

Now there’s nothing happening on the page. But there’s so much happening in real-life. Ironic, isn’t it?

All of a sudden, unexpected, and unplanned the door is open again and the river floods the bridge and the dormant feelings are catching fire again.

A bit uneasy at first, I soon fell right back into the rhythm and it became a normal thing.

So weird, hearing the heartbeats of the man who broke your heart. Kissing the hands that left marks in the past. Hearing the voice that made you cry.

So beautiful, smelling the scent that made you love. Hearing the words that gave you hope. Kissing the lips that made you smile.

New and familiar. A stranger in the skin of your first love. The same name now echoes into something so different.

And I have to remember, remember, remember — to remember the heartbeats and the hands and the voice and the scent and the words and the lips before I’m torpedoed into writing poems and stories and plays of oblivion and wishful thinking again and again and again until the sun sets once more on the story of us.

and here we are.