I had a dream about you last night. Don't worry, it wasn't anything weird like how it's happened before, but it was... different.
A long time ago, I was adamant that I fell in love with you. I firmly believed that we could never fall away, and that by some twist of fate or destiny or something we would always stay close friends and that you would eventually come to your senses and fall in love back.
It sounds ridiculous and stupid, I know. I have to live with my brain all the time, you only get to see windows of it. Aren't we both just so lucky?
Anyhow.
In this dream, we were together. Not together-together, you were just... here. With me. Sitting on the balcony of my complex and we were talking. Like we used to, you know. The quiet voices, the fleeting touches, or maybe that was my imagination. Did we ever even have any of that? But in my head, you were here, and you were with me, and I felt like nothing had changed.
But everything's gone wrong now. We haven't spoken in days, weeks, months. And soon those months will turn into years and you'll just be a name to me. Has it already been years, at this point? Did our friendship truly die that day in late August when I begged you not to forget me, likely knowing inside my heart somewhere that you were already on your way out? And then the months that followed when I tried and tried in vain to get your attention, fueling my efforts into a cause that could never be?
Those days are long gone. And you know, that's okay. We've both changed for the better, I think, and one day we can look back and say "Yeah, I remember them. An' I learned how to love better cos of it." The photography trips we never did, the talks in the car in the parking lot, the stories we tried to tell (and the consequent deadlines that came and went with little consequence). The first time you called me back, the night we ran away from our friends across the moonless park because we had gotten into a disagreement about which star was actually the North Star, the first time you reciprocated and called me your sister.
Oh, but I miss those; and you, though you've thankfully left my subconscious alone of late. Don't cross my mind much these days; I can even read your Facebook updates with an unimpressed blank stare. (Which, let's be honest, is quite the improvement to when I had to hide all your activity from my news feed lest I gave myself a heart attack. I'm really lame, we both already knew this.)
Although, I think it's awe that I feel to know that I don't even know you anymore. More astounding to me is the fact that I'm not even sure I want to.
I love you, and I always have. But when we get together we compress into this too-small mold of who we used to be, and who we aren't anymore. And so we squirm, uncomfortable, until the miles reign us back into silence and observance. And there we stay, a memory, a constant and unchanging companion to the other as we make our seemingly unchanging route through our lives, which ultimately end up being the two most opposite paths you can come up with.
And we drift... slowly, until the crack becomes a canyon, and both of us are too happy about where we ended up that we can't be bothered to fix it.
It's okay. When you're gone, we won't say your name.
It tastes strange on my tongue after all this time, anyway.
(p.s. If my subconscious had portrayed an accurate description of how you're actually looking now [which, who knows], you look great. Keep your 'ead up love, you're destined for greater things.)
