I have all
the time in the world, and I’m going to love you slowly.
I’m going
to love you like when I was a little girl and you were on the edge of teenage
disaster, but you were still a boy.
I’m going
to love you like when I was a teenage girl loving the world, and you loathed
every bit of it, on the edge of losing childhood for good.
For years I
did not remember your face. Neither do I now.
23. You
touch my hand, I stand between my parents, and you are lying on the couch
watching football. I notice that you have taken off your socks. Wondering, I
correct my image of you as you are now less haggard and thin. You look healthier.
From the couch, you reach me your hand as well, take mine in yours. It’s not a
handshake. I don’t know what it is.
Electrifying.
You try idle conversation with me; you help me with the computer while I make
blunt jokes and only manage bubble gum laughter. When you’re standing beside
me, I turn 14 all over again.
Something
dies in me when you say you have to pack your stuff and leave.
Sometimes
when I’m there you don’t show your face anywhere and you don’t talk to me again
like you did once, throwing your unknown soul at the hands of a strange,
vulnerable thing. Gripping me, I can feel a terrible emptiness and sadness.
There are things I cannot speak out loud, invisible webs trailing the buildings
of the living. And I don’t know you. Not really.
You told me
you see the same thin lines as I do, and that you are longing for the same thin
lined answers in the dark. But within you, I cannot see any light.
I have all
the time in the world, and I’m going to love you slowly. Maybe I’ll never tell
you.