Twenty Years After

Like a pack of drunken shadows, I waited twenty years to write this for you. I don't recall the day you first kissed me or the date I fell in love with you, but April 11th is when I first remember you in full image. Sitting in a room with a row of windows, I saw you leave the building and walk to the car. Your face silhouetted to the right, you wore a white shirt with vertical blue lines and a pair of dark pants. I looked at the clock; it was 11:45 a.m. I needed to keep that memory intact. I missed you, the smell of your cologne, the texture of your hair, and the sound of the echo of your voice. I leaned over to take in the hurried movement of your body as you sat with your back molded into the car seat. I felt like a banned book, or a song roaring out of a stereo in your life. What I knew was that my heart couldn't escape the anxiety of not being with you. When I could press my face against yours, I would lose my fear of falling. You were to me the sincerest essence of love. There was no magic formula or difference in faith that could keep my heart away from you. Even today as I write these lines I know to me loving you was my true reality.

I write and erase, write and erase. Maybe dizzy is not the right word, maybe a whirling sensation is closer to what it is I feel these days. I am going through overwhelming emotions, emotions that in the midst of the night have made breathing hard and my chest pound. I don't know how other people deal with losing their first love, but to me being away from you felt as if my arms were cut off my body.

You know, I wanted to be the one who reads other people's stories. It is not something I wanted to happen to me, to be the one who loved intensely and lost. But I forgive you not because you write me to seek forgiveness. I forgive you because before you, I didn't know how to love.