Twenty-two.

22.  You're only 22 today and baby, are you beautiful.  At least, I think so.

It's been almost a year now.  Since we celebrated.  Since I loved you with every nerve ending I didn't know I had.  You were only 20.  Then 21.  And baby, were you ever beautiful.  The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.  The White Buffalo Aphrodite holy fucking grail I manifested from my perfectly preserved school girl fantasy at the center of my beat up, patched-together heart.

I caught your eye through a reflection in a mirror, remember that? Your shirt was pink and I was sweating and I thought what I was seeing couldn't be reality and in a split second, at the same moment, we knew.  We knew together and we knew that the other one knew.  The road was inevitable even though we had yet to say our first hello.

But we knew.

And once we did, it was even better than the cherry of the cherry on top of the cherry.  It was magic set on fire with flames fanned from every direction.  Your hair was always in your eyes and our bodies belonged.  Oh how they belonged.  Our physicality spoke the same damn language, one I thought I'd forgotten, and didn't know it was so close to the surface, but your were the mighty igniter.

A match.  My match.  My equivalent, I said.

"You two are both gorgeous", said the lady at the coffee shop as you were deciding to break my most sensitive, beat up, patched-together heart.

I knew better, but I insisted on memorizing you every time.  Drunk on the smell of you, hands running over the texture of your skin.  I can still feel your phantom skin.  I can still see the colors changing as you flushed, and blushed, and bloomed because of me.  And I can still feel the feeling of belonging.  Oh, the way we belonged. For a moment.

But guess what? I lost you.  You were mine, and then you weren't, and you were lost.  Missing.  Missing from me.  I could not have braced myself if I'd tried, but the word comes in and takes me over.  Away.  You are away now.

A walking poem, you called me.  I want to live with you, you told me.  The prettiest person I've ever seen, you called me.  I love you, I can't live without you, you told me.

My dream girl.  Dream girl.  A dream.

A dream is not a tangible thing where we glimpse something wonderful and terrible for a minute yet fully live it...then it's gone.

Just like you and me.  Star children from the Pillars of Creation, we were, and we no longer exist either. But those shadows, the phantom us haunts me like a 7 thousand year old trail behind me.  But for a moment we experienced the same exact thing.  In life.  In time.  For a moment we knew, and for a moment we belonged.  Oh how we belonged.

Every day is the same damn day.  Every day I have to remind myself I have lost.

So I did

One day it was different.

He said, "can I call you sometime?" And I said okay.
He asked me if I wanted to go for a drink,
so I did.

Then it was a dinner, then three dinners, then thirty
and a drive on a summer night with a ladybug inside the car
"those are good luck!" he said.
I like the idea of believing in omens,
so I did.

Then the seasons changed
and snow fell and the year was ending
and he asked if I wanted to go to Mexico where we
would be warm and drink margaritas and
walk on the beach.
So I did.

And one night under the stars in the warm month of December
on the mexican beach, he brought up children
and I asked him, "do you see yourself getting married to me?"
and he did.

So I looked for a wedding dress and bought the first one
I tried on that fit like a glove
and flew to Las Vegas and stood with him in a chapel
and when the man marrying us asked me if I do,
I said I did.

Tattoo

Tattoo

I accidentally saw a picture of you today.

I say accidentally because I wasn't searching for you...

per say.

I just happened to be checking on someone who is linked to you

Just like I've been in denial of doing nearly daily for the past five months

And wouldn't you know it, there were two.

You've always had a habit of sneaking up on me

and causing an involuntary reaction.

You looked so different.

Younger, put together, the messy romance scraped off

but the thing that really took my breath away...

was that you looked...happy.

You wear New York well.

It was transformative.

I recognized it immediately as being the thing

always missing from our photos.

It seemed like a lost lifetime ago.

The thought of us.  Of a used to be you and me.

I only knew it was real because I know that on your ribcage

on your left side

under that suit is a tattoo.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The size and shape and placement

on your skin.

Your skin.  The texture.  The color.

How they’d change.

The bumps, the imperfections, the smell I hope I never forget.

What beauty.  What staggering fucking beauty.

That secret reminder on your left side.  

Or...was it the right?