#from the book ill never write
But you won’t light a match for me
I wrote this ages ago, before I knew the real you.
It was a mere summer daydream, it wasn’t supposed to go far. It was to be short and sweet, like ripping a band aid off, quick and painless. But the more time I spent with him, the more the infatuation grew. I didn’t care that he wasn’t six pack ripped. I didn’t care that he had fading pimples, or random tattoos. He took me out of my boundaries. He was new. And I soon found myself tracing the freckles that covered his nose and back, I found myself running my hands through his messy hair, and smiling into his sparkling blue eyes whenever he caught me staring. He was beautiful, and he made me feel the same. Our time together was a magical experience; the sneaking out in the pitch-dark of night, climbing out of motel room windows and smoking Marlboro reds. Lying on the basketball court side-by-side talking to one another under the thousands of stars. Car journeys, shopping, sleeping together, watching the meteor shower cuddled under a blanket, hands entwined.
It all happened so quickly, and ended the same way.
A bittersweet love affair.
He told me smoking was bad for me, I never thought he would turn out to be worse. He was the type of person that got stuck, not only in my head, but in my veins too. The type I wrote poetry about, but wouldn’t introduce to my parents. He lit a fire inside of me, and then left me to burn out. I didn’t need to kiss him to feel the sparks, every time his fingertips brushed across my skin, my heart would race like a Maserati. My skin erupted in goose bumps, and my stomach filled with butterflies. And every time his lips met mine, I felt like I was on ecstasy. He was the closest thing to love I ever felt, and now that he’s gone I don’t want to feel it again. When he kissed me for the last time, my heart felt this loneliness; I still haven’t recovered from it.
- an illicit affair
And then you’ll find me, in my bathroom, spending at least 40 minutes in the shower, washing away the feeling of his hands that still remain on my skin, or in my room, in front of my dressing table, staring at my reflection wondering what it is that makes people vacate their way out of my life, wondering what is so bad about me that no one seems to stick around. You could find me in the middle of my room, lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling, listening to one of my many vinyl records. Or you could find me sitting on my window ledge, smoking the cigarettes that he used to, reminiscing on the taste of his lips that once filled my senses, or writing him into another hundred pages of my endless journals.
You will start to wonder when you will eventually forget about him. It may be ten weeks or ten years from now. But you will hold out for the day. You will try to think about all the negativities about his personality, in hope that it will make it that little bit easier to let him go. Like the fact that he smoked like a fish, or maybe it was his inability to complete a sentence without swearing. Or maybe it was his trust issues or his emotional instability. The list will go on and on. But you will soon realise that you grew to love all these aspects of his personality. The way he looked with a cigarette perched between his teeth. Or the way ‘fuck’ sounded when it rolled off his tongue.
Some things you can’t go back to, because you let them slip away.
I still think about him sometimes. Not in the “oh, I miss him” way of thinking, but more wondering what my life would be like if I didn’t get that flight to Washington, had I not left him in New York. If I didn’t get in that taxi, if I didn’t run out on him in the middle of the night.
Here I am, sat in an apartment, with my boyfriend, with our dog, getting our ducks in a row to buy our first home, and my mind shifts to him. I don’t miss him, I don’t care about him anymore, I’m no longer crippled by the loss, but sometimes I do think about him. Because when I met him, there was a version of myself I found, and then I lost just as quickly. And maybe I miss her more than I’ll ever miss him.
- Ever since New York
