Not so long ago

Not so long ago all I wanted was to be with you. 

To hug you. 

To have your perfume linger on me. 

Every decision I made felt like something to be shared, I didn’t see what you didn’t share with me, I was so enraptured in the gift of your advice. 

Not so long ago we lay on your giant sofa heads next to each other and you told me a song made you think of me. And my heart soared because I assumed you held that song dear for your husband. I felt golden to be so thought of in your brain as to inhabit a song. Now when I listen to that song, I think of you thinking of me and it tears me apart a little inside.  

Not so long ago we sat on my bed and wondered at the skin on our shins. The dry scaliness and tiny dots and persistent hairs.  We wondered that as it turns out we had matching shins. There was so little of us that was alike to find these spaces upon ourselves that could match was gleeful.  

Not so long ago we would joke with each other about needing two portions of wagas chilli squid because we don’t share. We would laugh at the twisting turning loudness of our conversation over dinner. Never self-conscious if we disturbed other diners, never worried about being interrupted. I remember the edge of tears and pain in your voice when discussing something that took you by surprise. As though you thought you didn’t need to talk about it, but when you did it flooded you and I swam out in the waves to meet you.  

Not so long ago we could do a double take on our lives. That they were actually going the way we wanted, sort of. The way we had dreamed when we had scribbled notes to each other across the desks at school and built these fabulous fantasies. The truth was it was all there, meeting for dinner in the city after work, booking the flights to the places we wanted to go, I was safe knowing I was your only one, that I was the one you wanted to live this with. Well one of them.  

Not so long ago we made space for others in our lives and we rejoiced at those others and who they were. The importance of them meeting our counterpart, both of us first person we wanted to spend our lives with. We had to like our romantic partners and you made it through so many of mine. And you picked me up when they dropped me.  
 
I say not so long ago but maybe it is now. Because its years since we spoke. I am tripped up by this time because it’s as if nothing real has been made solid in my memory because I haven’t told you? is that why life seems to be slipping past me and stalled all at once. Because once you told me there was nothing that would stop us being friends but something did. Some unknown shadow that sits upon me. I stumble on memories constantly because now you are absent your presence is unbearable. The photos on my phone I can’t delete the joy I can’t unlock because it comes with all the pain of not knowing you anymore.