I'd only known you for this year, only started to see the kind of person you were. I never thought you were bad--I'm no one to condemn you--but the scars of your past enchanted me, mystified and intrigued me, who has no more than a few scratches by comparison. Your scars were wide, wide gulfs left by a flood of poor choices, a knotwork of lines I could almost see patterns in, if I stared hard enough.I think my staring stung you.
I think we never really understood each other: the first time we spoke and you asked me my name, I didn't hear you. I said, "Nice ink. I've never been to Egypt." You looked at me oddly and put a knife in the question--or was that a dagger I saw before me? You would text me, out of the blue-black of nights that stars could not shine through, and ask me what I was reading, and tell me I should lighten up, smoke weed or watch TV or something. You made me feel foolish, just a tight-lipped, tight-assed child who didn't know how to be human for all the rules she was raised on and couldn't think for herself hard enough to let go. But you drove me through downtown until I found my car and wouldn't let me pay you for the gas. You tried, I think, to connect, and keep connecting after class was dismissed.
I saw you on Tuesday, but the last text you had sent hurt so much that I never did reply. I should have replied. I have since come to realize that you hurting me might have been the only way you showed that you were hurting, too. And I missed it. I am trying every day not to blame myself for that, and some days--most days--I fail spectacularly.
I want to show you all of my scars and scream and howl to the dark parts of the moon. I want to crawl into the Evergreen crypt you broke into, and pretend it is yours, and that I am somehow with you again. I want to walk to the end of the streetcar line and try, try to remember more of the conversation we had there, the one I paid less attention to than I ever will again. I want to reach up, place my small hand on those wide scars and tell you that you are a beautiful person, and that I am glad to know you, and that we all hurt but that's why we are given each other to connect with. I know you would look at me oddly for that, brush me off & ask me what the hell I'd been smoking, but I want to see that look. I want you to live again.
I think we never really understood each other: the first time we spoke and you asked me my name, I didn't hear you. I said, "Nice ink. I've never been to Egypt." You looked at me oddly and put a knife in the question--or was that a dagger I saw before me? You would text me, out of the blue-black of nights that stars could not shine through, and ask me what I was reading, and tell me I should lighten up, smoke weed or watch TV or something. You made me feel foolish, just a tight-lipped, tight-assed child who didn't know how to be human for all the rules she was raised on and couldn't think for herself hard enough to let go. But you drove me through downtown until I found my car and wouldn't let me pay you for the gas. You tried, I think, to connect, and keep connecting after class was dismissed.
I saw you on Tuesday, but the last text you had sent hurt so much that I never did reply. I should have replied. I have since come to realize that you hurting me might have been the only way you showed that you were hurting, too. And I missed it. I am trying every day not to blame myself for that, and some days--most days--I fail spectacularly.
I want to show you all of my scars and scream and howl to the dark parts of the moon. I want to crawl into the Evergreen crypt you broke into, and pretend it is yours, and that I am somehow with you again. I want to walk to the end of the streetcar line and try, try to remember more of the conversation we had there, the one I paid less attention to than I ever will again. I want to reach up, place my small hand on those wide scars and tell you that you are a beautiful person, and that I am glad to know you, and that we all hurt but that's why we are given each other to connect with. I know you would look at me oddly for that, brush me off & ask me what the hell I'd been smoking, but I want to see that look. I want you to live again.