You can find me in the earlier dark hours, serenaded by the sounds of erratic conversation bubbling from the community just outside my door. I crack the door, purposefully leaving space for the dimmed yellow light to leak in. Through the opening in my window, I see the lamp posts reflect off the snow.
Across all bounds of reason or practicality, I think of them. Can you miss someone that you never had? Can you miss even the absence of their affection? I find myself retracing- not steps- but memories, desperately grasping at loose threads. The truth, as it washes over me, is that although it hurts me, I don't want to let go.
I feel compelled to keep a file of it all- a shattered portrait of tension, rejection, encouragement, pride, shame, fear, grief, sorrow, infatuation. I'm stuck in this ritual, my hands growing bloody and raw from stitching and re-stitching the same tired wound. My shaky, desperate fingers, drawing out pleas each time I dive back in, frantic to file the memories away.
I am neurotic in my desire to have them timestamped and sealed, protected from wilting judgment from others. I'm relentless in building glass walls, preserving the fragile, cracking hope.
A vague passage will not suffice.
A