"You were a spike in my dull life. You were an adventure when I really needed one. I fell in love with your words first. They were light and playful and imaginative. There was a promise behind them of a quick mind and an insight beyond what most people ever achieve. Then I fell in love with your image. Just a flat swirl of color in an alluring shape. Still playful, still promising. Then your bounce. I loved how you bounced around, fully entranced by the moment. Graceful, playful, promising. Your voice was a joy to hear. It wasn't like music and it wasn't like honey, but it fit you so well. It was honest, promising. I fell in love with your face. Your eyes would go wide when you spoke, and the wonders there would hold me, make me stare. I knew I was staring. Your thin lips, your perfect nose, your rounded cheeks and your pointed chin, all made you look so beautiful. Your hair came around your face like a black halo, and the effect was breathtaking, promising. I fell in love with your pain, as well. So much pain that I began to feel it as if it were my own, so much did I care for you.
"I wanted to take it all into myself, relieve you of that burden, before I realized how it had shaped you. I loved your pain, but I feared it. The last thing I came to love was your touch, and it's what I miss the most about you now. It was so familiar, like I'd known it my whole life. Maybe I did, somewhere in a dream. And now you're a memory. I don't expect to love anyone like you again. In our short time, you took every part of me and made it better. I'll always look for you. Every time there's a knock at the door, or a call from a number I don't recognize. Every time I get a letter with no return address, I'll think of you and I'll feel this same emptiness. And when I do, I'll sacrifice a tear for you.
Just one."
The last thing I ever wrote to her, and I never sent it.
The next step was
getting over her. Getting rid of reminders. The stupidest
little things would remind me of her. A sweater, a stuffed duck, a
quarter that had been up her nose once... All these things had to go. It wasn't so bad. The sweater couldn't go to charity. I couldn't let anyone else wear it. Not after how
small and
beautiful and
protected she looked in it. I threw it out with the garbage. I didn't want to get rid of the duck, so I had to clean it,
sterilize it, get the very last of her
scent out of its synthetic feathers. I remember the way she smelled like I remember every other possible sensation of her, and I'm not sure whether I'm glad that I no longer have a tangible
point of reference. The quarter? Ha, the most
poetic demise of all, for that goober-encrusted legal tender. I spent it. How delightfully
callous and cold I was learning to be.
...
Pictures, conversation logs. These were the really hard things to get rid of. I'd met her through the
internet, and spent more time with her on this impersonal
medium than any other. These
jpgs and
htms meant the world to me, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. There has to be that little
shred of hope, you see; one tiny piece of my
heart that's not dead yet. These photos and lines of text need to be on call, to regenerate that place in me if or when she calls again. Because I know I'd take her back.
I'll always take her back.