Atomic No. 5

I still remember the few leaves of recycled paper I wrote on some summers ago. I wrote about footsteps and raindrops and tapping sounds which were the backdrop to my afternoons spent in the freezing cold, waiting for the walk home and the chaste, reluctant parting, and the long nights ahead to be spent talking mostly about music, mostly about life, and very, very rarely about love, although that probably was the first, and perhaps only, time I ever returned that word to a living soul.

The tragedy was not kept silences nor reciprocation but timing. I simply was not ready nor willing to trade my dreams and discipline and filial promise for affection. Nor did I believe anything so pure should be kept secret. Secrets are meant for sins and dark places, and I will not have my affection hidden away like an apology waiting to be given. No, I'll have it when I'm ready - that is when I can shout it out loud, after my dreams have been chased down and the boxes of obligations ticked.

So we agreed to ignore our tiny confession but you were much better than I in keeping those feelings in check that I simply had to move away and create distance when digital messages remained unanswered, and expectations were unmet. You know I rarely pour my blood out like this and sometimes silence is the worst reply one can get, and sometimes it doesn't feel enough to be "just friends," that when you stopped talking, I willed myself to stop hoping. If you were hurt by what happened or didn't happen, I am  sorry; you weren't the only one.

And I convinced myself and others that it wasn't anything at all - and maybe it wasn't, give me just enough time and I will swear that it wasn't - but I still wonder about those pages you folded and tucked inside your wallet, as though it had value like the money we still needed to make. I wonder if and when you threw them away, and if you read them again before you did, if you did, 'cause I did not keep a spare.

It was foolish of me to think there was a way of going back. Not everyone means it when they say they will wait and our way always seem to be forward. I want to write more and make sense of that summer and this but maybe my goodbye should be like the suddenness of your changing: strange, surprising, but feels just a little bit deserved.