Saturday, December 13, 2014

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.