I can still recall your face. I was slumped against the wall of your apartment, defeated, deflated, worn down from so many evenings spent arguing about things that weren't going to change. Things I wasn't willing to change. I can still remember the shock, the horror which came over you when you realized that I was done fighting. I took all the love that you had given me, more than I had ever thought possible, and shattered it. Fragments, like crumbs, fell upon your carpet. Pieces of your heart.
By now you've realized how much better it is for you. I didn't do it for you, but you know that. You knew me too well not to see through my flimsy pretense.
I can still recall your face on that dark Wednesday night. A different night. Mascara running for your tears, your body shaking with the weight of your emotion. I was overwhelmed, as you cried over me, overwhelmed by the depth of your passion. Stunned by that unexpected paroxysm. Bewildered by the speed at which fate plays her cards. Outgunned and outmaneuvered. You begged me never to leave. I had no plans to, I had said then, and I wasn't lying. I rarely make plans and when I do, I never stick by them. Maybe if I could have kept that picture of you, that Wednesday night version of who you were, who you are, maybe then I never would have left.
Instead, I've graduated. I've taken my rightful place. Another box beneath your bed. Another ghost haunting the dark beneath your dreams. Lingering over that which should be dead and buried. Peering into the past for one more glance, one more glimmer of the moments in which I lost the world and saved myself. I can't imagine it playing out any other way, no way to skirt the inevitable. We were simply dominoes, bumping into one another. A brief connection, a catalyst to push us forward.
Beyond the reach of the weary angels, guardians of the river of fire, past the rocky heath and into the simmering pools where slumbers the next brood, the next wave, denizens of the endless round. Oblivious, always, of my mistakes, I am eager for it.
