A Letter For Chris, in All the Ways That Remain
I’ll be in Spencer this Sunday…
A little place for chicken.
Passing far too close to where you are.
Where you were...
Where you’ve always been.
I let you go in December.
At least,
In all the ways a person can force themselves to.
No messages. No calls.
No quiet searching through fragments of your life online.
I’ve kept my distance.
The kind you asked for without words.
The kind I promised myself to respect.
Even when it hollowed something out of me...
But still,
You find me.
Not by choice, no.
But in the quiet, unguarded parts of my days.
In dreams that feel too real to be forgiven.
In moments that start small,
And then split me open.
Slowly. Deeply.
Until I feel you everywhere...
Like something woven into the marrow of who I am.
Feasting on my deepest, darkest secrets.
Haunting feels too gentle a word.
Too kind.
You're threaded into everything...
The very fibers of everything I ever have or ever will love.
Whether I want that or not.
And I don’t.
God, I don’t.
Not like this.
Not as something unfinished.
Not as something that only lives inside me.
I don’t even understand why I still love you.
Not after everything.
Not after all this time...
And yet, there you are.
In my thoughts. In my sleep.
In the quiet spaces where logic has no say...
A version of you my mind refuses to release,
Even if that version no longer exists.
But I will be there, Sunday.
And somewhere along that drive,
You’ll slip into my thoughts again...
As you somehow always do.
I’ll wonder how you’ve been,
If you're happy,
What your soul looks like now...
I know we won’t cross paths.
I know how incredibly unlikely that is...
And still…
Some part of me will imagine it.
What if we did?
What if,
Just for a second,
Your eyes met mine?
Would you smile?
Softly, like something familiar you almost remember?
Would there be warmth?
Recognition?
Or would you turn away again?
Like you always have...
Like you've always needed to?
I will be there.
And in all the ways that matter,
And all the ways that don’t,
I have always been here.
Still loving you...
In every raw, vulnerable way we once promised.
Even if now,
I’m the only one who remembers how...