Where did we go? [[A poem]]

 

You were my dream before I even knew you.

I hoped you’d be out there somewhere and that for now we were just trying to get ourselves together. Trying to love ourselves and accept our flaws so that we’d be ready for each other when the time came.

And then the time came.

All of those moments when I felt like you may not exist washed away. When I took that road trip with my mom she held a missing person’s poster close to her heart. As she held it close and soaked it with her tears one, by one, by one…

I wondered if we shared more than just the same blood.

But then I saw your face, and for the first time – for the very first time – I felt reassured. I felt calm.

When I looked at you, I saw everything.

My heart beating quickly, the beauty in myself. I saw you looking at me the way no one else ever had.

The way I always wanted someone to look at me.

The way I looked at you, too.

Your smile sent an electric current through me.

Do you remember the night we made that fort in my apartment? It was filled with christmas lights and warm blankets. We bought wine and ordered pizza, dedicated to a night in. You smiled over me as I laid on the bed,Leon Bridges singing in the background. We had conversations and learned about each other. We laughed and you touched my face as gently as I had always wanted someone to.

And that was us. When the opportunity presented itself, we’d spend time together. That’s just what we wanted.

Now we can only seem to spend time together if there’s something around to entertain us. The TV, our phones, our own problems, our egos. So we order pizza and drink wine. We dedicate to stay in, but not because we want to be together.

Truth is we don’t want to go anywhere. Home is just the easiest place to exist.

We sit next to each other, but we don’t speak. We wish we could…. and we definitely could. But we don’t.

Why don’t we just speak?

Why don’t I just speak to you right now?

Perhaps because I don’t like talking to myself.

You sit with your denial, and I sit with my guilt.

We don’t try to work it out anymore.

We don’t even fight. We bicker. We stopped communicating. We stopped trying.

You stopped trying.

Right now there’s a fort in our apartment that I built by myself, just for fun. Every time I look at it my only desire is to take it down and clean the room.

Cleanse myself of the messiness that has transpired.

Our kisses don’t feel real anymore. They feel more like folding a shirt

When I look at you. I don’t see myself anymore. I don’t see you anymore.

I don’t see us anymore.

You don’t look at me at all anymore.

I laid in bed with myself and thought about it for a while. Cried about it for a while. Sighed about it for a while. kicked myself to walk through the door and cursed myself for even considering it.

I wish I could go back in time for even a minute to tell you what’s going on.

You’d hold me like you used to and let me cry in your arms. I wouldn’t feel like I lost you. I would ask him to knock some sense into you.

To listen to me. To hear my words. To absorb my words. To not take me for granted.

But I couldn’t do that. So I’d have to go on a mission to rescue you myself.

I tried peeling the layers back to see if I could find you. See if I could bring you home. I put up posters and signs so that maybe someone could tell me where you were. I didn’t happen to see any of me as I was taping them to trees and poles.

I tried looking through the magnifying glass you bought as part of our Sherlock and Watson costumes. I still couldn’t find you.

Hard as I’ve tried I don’t see us anymore.

All I see are empty bodies that walk around and say things that we would never say. Do things that we would never do.

Bodies that we no longer control.

Bodies that sleep next to each other every night but somehow feel like they’re alone.

Where did we go?