Best to be the Changing Water

It's times like these I wonder if I'll ever be alright again. I know the pain has got to go away sometime, and it's usually not this bad. Someday all I'll have is a scar on my heart in the shape of her name, but right now it's still a tender injury, fighting infection.

Even in my dreams she's nothing but a fantasy, a memory twisting into my heart to make it bleed again. A twisted, beautiful memory, sharp and sweet, with the bitterest aftertaste.

I miss her like the sun and rain and wind. Her warmth, when she was true to her heart, when she smiled shyly and I knew beyond a doubt that I adored her, wanted nothing more than to make her happy. Even when she cried and screamed she was beautiful. I don't know where we got so lost.

I got so jaded, and so overwhelmed.

How can one be so jaded and so naive at the same time? To believe so strongly in everyone else, and yet never in my own self.

I still remember how it felt to wake up curled around her, protective and warm. Did I touch her cheek and smile, and tell her without words how I felt? I can't remember. It's all a blur, the words that stand out are rare in the muddle, the actions even more so.

I dreamed that I was imagining her there. Dreamed I was pretending I could hold her tight again. How twisted is that? How broken.

Even still, you haunt my memories, my dreams, my heart.

Even now, I wake with an ache inside. It's been too long for me to wake up crying, not long enough for me to laugh it off. Maybe, without the closure I never got, it will never truly be gone. Maybe I will always love you, no matter how much I think "I'm over him, I'm alright now."

Even in my dreams, I was never exactly what you wanted. You didn't want my childish adoration, you thought me a tagalong and a dreamer. You would never have made my daydreams come true, would you? You would have one day told me you'd moved on; you'd have fallen in love with someone else and broken my heart.

The look on your dream-self's face when I smiled up at you and said "I've waited this long, I think I can wait a little longer" was terribly familiar. It was a look that said you recognized the love in my eyes and you didn't want it. So by the time I'd followed you into another room, you were hurriedly making your excuses to go. Somewhere, anywhere, you were going; I thought perhaps to get a new pack of cigarettes, and I kept thinking "If only I could get a straight answer from him, because if that's all he wants then I have cigarettes he can have." If only you'd answered me, if only you'd stayed.

You never can, never will.

Not even in my dreams.

I still wonder; did you love me? Any more than any other girl, was I special like you were to me? Or did you laugh at the way I continued to be infatuated, did you think that's all it was? Too kind to outright tell me, too far away in everything you had to deal with at the time.

Have you forgotten me? Or do you still remember, do you wonder what we could have been, do you still dream of me sometimes?

I miss you.

I wouldn't go back and change things, not even if I had the power, but I wish I could see you again. Even if it's just to tell you, with a sad smile, that I wasn't just a child with an infatuation, that I still love you, that I probably always will. Tell you to have a wonderful life, with the family you've created. Walk away, and then I'll be able to never look back. I'll be able to find my closure and let you go.

But I'll still never forget you, and I'll never stop loving you.

Even if you still break my heart in my dreams.