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I don't care about being a good writer tonight.
I just want my words to keep me tethered to the memory of you.
When did I lose you? When was the first moment.
When did I ever have you?
I'm going to sit with your candle tonight until it goes out. Tonight is the last night. I'm not sure if it's you or the illusion of you that I mourn.
I loved you.
I envied you.
You saved me from thinking that I was alone in the world that no one would ever be able to speak to me - to light me up. I had thought there was nothing but mediocrity to digest like unfrosted mini-wheats.
I'm not doing it right. I want to elegy you. I want to document you. I want to make mad proofs on this unread forum that forge a spell that brings you back to me.
Did I ever have you?
When did you stop getting drunk with me? I barely noticed. It must have been months ago. You stopped desiring to lose control. You pulled back.
I am your appreciation society. I mourn you like I would my child if I knew what that was like.
You were never really there though. You never really let me in the smallest sliver of a crack. I only got to see the charm, the facade, the splendor.
The Rules of the Game is about cruelty and pretending that it's not - moving on in your life. I forget the quote that Renior made famous but something like people will do what they do. It's much better said. pithy.
I don't want to stop writing. I want to alchemize you on the page.
What did I see? I saw a rock. I saw a man. I felt a little boy. I felt a stubborn teenager who cut his arm to feel some semblance of control. I loved hearing your stories. I was so jealous of them. The toga party killed me. The women you loved, I wish I could be one of them.
And now, a bier is constructed for you of your face on a candle that was given to you as a joke on a shoot for the first and only commercial you knew me. I love so much to look at it. It's the one I pulled out of the garbage, and I never pull things out of the garbage - especially the big can.
You lit me up. You made me think I could write a mystery novel and have it sell and be a human who wasn't stuffed in a box to survive. You once wrote me a text at a baseball game "you're missing it."
I was wandering around balancing boiled peanuts and Coca Cola in my arms.
It's so hard to believe you didn't love me. The t-shirts were the thing that fooled me the most (besides coming to my family's Christmas). You wore them like a knight wearing my standard. It was one of the only things I could cling to.
I became a fawn. You became a bored hunter.
And Christmas. I wonder if the only reason you came was out of pity for me? did you pity me my love. I loved being in a silly pub in a rich people's amusement town texting your brother double nickels. I loved playing billiards with you and getting blotto drunk in front a a fireplace with fir branches festively hanging from the ceiling.
"It's not my fault". That's what you spat out when I told you I loved you again and noted that you don't feel the same.
I'm going to have to let go that I didn't make you turn around on that winding highland road and ask you to let me have one last fling down the fake snow hill on an inflated tire.
The only foto I've allowed myself to keep is the one of the view from your non-leather sofa to the screen door sunlit kitchen. I've said all of it so many times before, yet I'll say it again. and again. You never danced with me in that kitchen. you never made me anything but coffee.
I've tried so hard to hate you - to think you're broken - that you're a douche and you are cold and assholeish and incapable of love.
and I can't do it.
you were a fun companion. I'm going to have to burn you and walk away, .
because I'm the writer, I'm going to write something I wanted:
You touched my hair and pushed it back from my cheek - caressing my skin with your fingertip like whiskey touching silk. You had never done this before. You looked me in the eye. You were naked as birth.
"I love you Kristen."
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