Not You

You came back. I’ve danced this dance before, heard the echoes of a story too familiar. You came back and things were the same, except different. I was a little bit stronger, and just as unwise. And all I heard were the things I tried to say, hoped to say and ended up not saying.

Wondering how a guy could deserve a second chance. He could have called himself the luckiest guy, he should have, why didn’t he, how didn’t he, it doesn’t matter, he didn’t. Yet I dub him the most unlucky of all guys. If life is cruel and unfair, if Lady Luck smiles only upon those who recognize her face, if the circumstance, the tune, the chord, the faintest of melodies are what shape the decisions you end up making, then he is but unlucky. Maybe I’m being kind to call an imbecile as nothing more than tormented by fate, as the rhyme and reason for absolutely stupidity.

I wish you knew just how much a guy like that should mean. If Gods and men demand a higher form of punctuation to pronounce their significance, he gets none. For he is neither. A noun as common as any. Every morning when he was blessed enough to wake up besides those auburn locks, he should have thanked every angel, every curse and demon that put his path besides yours.

And I stand here, looking. My head turning at every gorgeous face, miniscule hemline and shining pupil. Seeing the beauty and wonder before me, wondering who would be the next. Truth is that you’re not the most beautiful person in the world. I can count many more with better symmetry, style, substance or stance. But there is one thing that makes every face worthless in my eye. They all have the same problem, that same flaw.

They are all, not you.  

And I know that to you, I’m not even a second glance. I know where I stand and I know just how far it is from you. Maybe you’ll never see me as anything more than a child. But it doesn’t really matter, because last night I stumbled up the stairs after I stumbled through the last phrase I uttered to her gorgeous face, awkward and ambiguous and always overly ambitious to anticipate anything more. And I finally shed a tear for someone that wasn’t her who is not worthy to be named.

I don’t know where I am, or where I’ll go from here. I know I’ll hope, I know it will crush me. But like I said, I’ve danced this dance before. And maybe next time, I’ll know the steps. 

Just a Weirdo

Here I am.

Off my high horse. Without the vantage to glare down at the petulant masses. Dirty, rotten sandals replacing the finely crafted leather boots, a mud-soaked tunic clinging to the broken mass that is used to finer silks. I've lost my scales, I can't find the balance. My horse was dying and still my hands cleave to the bloodied sword that brought about my cruel mercy.

It's been a while coming. It started with the shame. Through every battle, every skirmish, my horse kept me safe. I was a mounted knight. Always the one with the higher ground. Above everyone else. I could see their flaws so clearly. I was special. I was more than human. I ruled my own little world and I was better than everything in it.

And through it all, I could have nothing else but my high horse on which I was seated. I would prove just how special I was. I wore the scars of battle proudly, as a testament to one who is fit to sit on such a steed. Yet for all my vantage, I couldn't see what I had become. Then came a misstep. And another. And finally I had to look back at the carnage I had left. And saw what I could never bear to see, and what the stars would be cruel to deign on me again. Those I had hurt from my God-damned high horse. Some who meant the world to me. Some who didn't matter as much. And one whom I had intended to hurt, to mirror the scar embedded on the left side of my chest.

I couldn't believe what I'd become. This was not who I was. This is not who I am. There remains one thing left to do. You don't ride a horse into battle time and again without it becoming a part of you. I swear that I felt the blade carving through flesh as I swung it down towards my horse. And then it was over.

I've thrown down my fine silks and armor. I walk now, a peasant. One of many. Just another weirdo. Another misunderstood soul. The last thing I ever wanted to be and yet everything I was. Human. One of them. This race that I've hated so long for their cruelty and malevolence towards each other. Wretched beings, I cried. But I'm one of them now.

It's different, walking. I feel this is where I was supposed to be all along. I can look people in the eye. Stare into their beautiful eyes stinging with the pain of a thousand hurts as we hold hands and walk together. I'm no better than them. I'm nothing more than just another weirdo. Yet I don't care for my horse, all I want is the chance to look someone in the eye, tell them that I can see their pain and throw my arm around them as we lean on each other down this rugged, beautiful path that we call life.

I'm just another weirdo, and I couldn't be happier.

1.43

I woke up and threw my phone against the wall. Punching a pillow, kicking a mattress in a tantrum tantamount to a twelve year old, furious with angst and anger, rage and confusion and worst of all, the possibility of hope. Looking at the phone, I read the message again. And again. The birth of hope, the promise of pain. And at 1.43, the only woman who could look me in the eye was free.

An honest person, someone I know I could trust. Someone who is kind, intelligent, sweet. Someone whom I could never call mine. A woman so cruel to be kind to me. And so, angry, I work myself up into a rage again. And then calm, I pull the strands of myself together, and watch helplessly as she sinks back from whence she came. Leaving me, still standing, still waiting.

It’s not her concern, none of her business really. It’s not completely her fault and definitely not her worry. While I wonder what horrific sin I have committed to be so accursed as to like someone so perfect. And I sit here, unable to come to grips with myself. Unsure and uncertain and worst of all unable. Refusing to open the box and find a dead cat, playing it safe, standing on the side, too scared to do anything but wait and wish for another life.

Be my rock, be my solace. Be my shouler to cry on. And I would wake up at 1.43 every morning, if only to throw my phone at the wall again and breathe in the crushing air of hope.   

Only You

I want you to know that it was only you. There were others flocking about, in a different order, of a varying proximity. And I would look, and wonder, but never wandered. Despite the years going by, the distance between us which always grew further and further, tantalizingly close for a second; and further still, there was only one. Despite being away, despite being around others, despite trying to run away, bitter and hateful, there was still only one.

I asked myself over and over why. Why was I never able to move on? Why can’t I move on now? What was so incredibly special about someone who turned out to be the complete antithesis of me, someone who crushed me and nearly completely destroyed me? I suppose because through it all, I never had to be anyone or anything other than myself. And I was loved for that.

'

And in a way I understand what happened, although I still never fully understood why. Why someone would be afraid of themselves, would choose to deny everything that made them human, until nothing remains but a shell of a person, a hollow soul, an empty case. And I know there is nothing to go back to and that nothing remains.

Except to settle the final score. The remaining doubt, something which I felt was on her mind. And if I could tell her one thing, I would want her to know that it was only her. Only you. And not just from the first moment I met you, because there was no one before that. A part of me thinks that I may never completely trust anyone else after that. And so one remains, a part of my life, a special, treasured part of my existence, which started from when I met you till we had to say our last goodbye.

And again, despite others coming in the way, distractions and disturbances, time and distance, people and place, there was only ever one.

And I want you to know that it was you.