To All The Friends I've Loved Before: 09

you love love love, when you know I can't love

To All The Friends I’ve Loved Before is a collection of unsaid promises to the people who have meant the most. The friends I’ve lost, the relationships I’ve ruined, the unspoken words between two people who never had a chance.

You would have put down your glasses about now.

Seeing the news, you’d have leaned back in your chair, a long sigh escaping your lips. Forefinger and thumb meeting to rub the bridge of your nose. “She’d be devastated,” you’d say, eyes still closed, head mid-shake. “Just devastated.” And you’d be right. “I should reach out to her,” you’d think. And you’d even mean it. You really would.

But then she’d walk in or he’d call and you’d sit up straight and find another distraction. “Later,” you’d tell yourself. “I'll reach out, later.”

And the morning will go and the evening will pass and the leaves will begin to turn. There’s such a pleasant ache to how we pass the time between one another, like idle shores, boats in the current, your words always at the tip of my tongue.

But I’m still waiting.

Anything but you, I remember you saying, I’d rather anything but you. Blankets and coffee, the smell of campfire on your hair. You apologized, of course you did. Even though it was my fault. I probably even made you work for my forgiveness. Can I trust you again? And you would have felt so bad. But it was never really your fault. Even if I let you think it was. Even if I kind of liked having that effect on you. Is that wicked to say?

I check my messages all the time.

And there are so many well wishes, faces I haven’t seen, things they want to say. I’m sorry, it’s awful, you’re in my thoughts. But there is nothing from you. And I can’t help but thumb through my messages with a naive sort of hope. Maybe the notification just didn’t come through? Maybe you’re just taking your time? Maybe you’ll show up in that same beat-up Toyota that I know you don’t have anymore; maybe you’ll send flowers, maybe you’ll send my favorite dessert, proving once and for all you’re still the only one who knows me after all these years. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I just know you wouldn’t let me down this time. Not like this. Not like them. You just wouldn’t. You couldn’t.

But you do.

So you lean back in your chair, and your pen is in your ear, your glasses pushed up as you glance at your phone. Brilliant ambers and dazzling greens, Autumn on the coolest day. We never could escape one another.

Sometimes we both wish this weren’t the case.

A flickering thought. Heat and stars and long country roads. Maybe now, you think. But then the baby cries and the mailman is here and it’s almost time to start dinner and you think, later, for sure. Definitely later.

And the leaves turn to snow, the snow turns to mud, dirt, flowers. Rebirth.

A song, a melody, a familiar burning in my chest. It hurts to listen, so I turn it up, let our story unfold through lyrics that were never ours. More well wishes. Condolences. Love. But none of it feels real, and I don’t want to hear it, so I refresh my messages, and I check my deliveries, and peer out my curtains and I look, and wait, and hope.

God, I’m so naive.

But still, I’ll never stop waiting for you.

Recommended listening:

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Thanks for going with me on this one, I know it’s a bit sadder and weirder than the rest of the series. I’ve recently gone through a loss and while I promise all my upcoming content is not going to be this depressing, because trust me, I don’t want to live in this space either, it felt good to get this one out. Thanks for being here 🖤

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