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This is it, I think. This is where I let go. This is where I let him go.
I curse the sky for not looking half as beautiful as you were, standing across from me in that stupid shirt that made me cry the first time I saw you wearing it.
My mom once told me it rains when the Gods cry.
“Why would they be crying?” I asked.
“Maybe to grieve.”
Our relationship comes back to me, in supercuts. I remember the day I swallowed the guilt and accepted how I felt. I was patient. I signed myself up for the responsibility of collecting your rubble and rebuilding the city just for you until you could also find a home in the house I built for us.
My divorced mother would call me naive. Love was a liability, a burden to bear, your Achilles’ heel, why do you hand it the keys to grow beyond your control?
But I was seventeen and in love, what did I do better than loving you?
They’d say things that would bring me to my knees, but you would catch me and let me fall into your arms. You’d tell me repentance doesn’t look pretty on you, and kiss me like hope until I believe you again and again.
I tell you,
“In my next life I’ll become a cartographer, so I can trace every outline of your face.”
and you ask me,
“How do you know you’ll still love me then?”
and I tell you,
“I hope I’ll love you for years and years.”
so you kiss me on the mouth for what we hope would be for eons and eons.
I’d sketch every crevice of your body just so you can see myself in the way I see you and you kiss me on the mouth to shut me up because you know I’d never lie to you.
You would recite to me your favorite poems while you lay on my lap and I run my fingers through your hair just the way you like.
We end up in this ritual every time, and each time is a sacred beginning.
You've read me these countless times and every time you ask me what’s my favorite I can barely recall a line. I want to pull you into my arms and kiss the pout off your face and tell you I’m sorry, I can’t help if your voice sounds like a mantra.
At parties, crowded rooms with seas of nameless expressions, it didn’t matter to me, because yours was the only face that I needed to see.
You knew I dreaded coming to these. Any day I would prefer sitting at the library catching up on books that keep piling up on my list during the year, then coming around later to pick you up. But being with you made me realize I’d do anything, as long as I was the sole reason for your happiness.
The life of the party you were, it gave me a sort of sick pride knowing I was the one you were doing it for.
My mind was the one place I had to myself, where all my thoughts were for my eyes only and I was content with this, until I met you.
One look at your face and it makes me want to melt all the walls that I’ve been building.
I want to tell you about the horrid day that I had at work today, the person in class that makes me want to claw my eyes out, read you the latest poem I’ve stumbled across, how I got that scar on my wrist.
Having baggage was heavy, but you made me realise I don’t have to carry it with me for the rest of my life, that I can learn to unpack it.
Every time you thought I wasn’t looking, you would be biting your lip, lost in your head without me taking your hand and leading you out of there, and you would be trying to solve a puzzle in your mind not knowing it had no real answer.
I wanted to reach out with a finger and smooth the crease in between your eyebrows, but I knew if I did, it would just grow back.
So, I was patient, and I would watch you from the sideline as you’d try to cheat your way to the end, because I didn't say this but you knew the longer you took, the more my heart chipped.
But what I also didn’t tell you was I was willing to wait all my lifetimes for you, if it meant you’d spend one with me. Every time a why was etched on your face, I would hold you in my arms with a because. And every time you’d catch my eyes from across the hall you looked as though you knew you would, too.
I used to love your voice when you would yell at me from the kitchen as I lay in our bed, telling me I’m late for work, or when you carry me home on your back when I’m drunk.
You struggle to pull the keys out your pocket to unlock the door because you need to hold my hands just in case I fall. You’d mutter things along the lines of ‘You’re lucky I love you’ but we both know I wouldn’t remember any of this come morning.
Now I hate the way your voice resonates, the way it corresponds with resentment, and I want to run to my room, pack my things in a suitcase and book the next flight out of the country just so I never have to hear it again.
I’d pour my feelings into a box and seal it with that masking tape so I can be one on my own, but that would require a box with measurements unknown.
The space in my heart that I’ve rented out just for you is like our universe. Just when you think you’ve got it, you’ve only discovered more areas that are undiscovered, and suddenly it’s impossible to measure its amount in words, as if any numeric value known would even touch the surface of its real volume.
I used to love your hands when you would hold them in the middle of the winter.
When I would laugh about it, your stuttering excuse was to keep them warm, even when I’m wearing the mittens your dad gave you and never let anyone else wear as you swore they were the warmest on the planet, or when we’re on the subway home from work and I’m holding on and your hand would snake on top of mine. But now your hand is too cold and calloused to hold.
He was my religion, and recantation was on the tip of my tongue. But forgiveness takes me by the hand, and like an old forgotten tale recites the words of the prayer to me and leads me back to my temple. Because rain does not only represent grief. It also means new beginnings.
The rain always comes where I am, but you stand with me and bring shelter along with you.
“Let’s go home,” he tells me.