Sidewalk

A light rain falls on me as I walk down Atlantic Avenue, early on this holiday morning, the streets deserted and wet, the sidewalk covered in seeds from the trees, fallen from the brief but intense downpour of just a few minutes ago. I think the sidewalk will forgive me for what I have to do.

A year ago today, you made me an affectionately-named playlist of songs that you wanted me to hear. I was touched, wanting your attention, but it was so loaded with mixed messages that I found myself unable to connect to you, the next day during our day at the beach with your ex-boyfriend and his new boyfriend, or the barbecue at his house. I didn't understand how you could love me and not want to be with me, but want to be with me, and want to keep me near, but not want to let us be together.

"If one day we had to say goodbye / And our love should fade away and die / In my heart you will remain here."

I listened to that song over and over for weeks and tried to understand. I thought I did, for a while, but I didn't. I really didn't.

But now, as I walk and remember you, two years ago, that day that you came up to visit me, how you looked lit by the fading sun in the parking lot down the street from my parents' house, where we stopped for me to smoke, and I don't even think it's the same person. I remember you sitting across from me at breakfast, on your birthday in San Francisco, in a restaurant that's recently been shuttered and reinvented, and the hurt I feel is different now. I don't want it back. I think that I don't love you anymore, and I wish I never had.

I come to stop in the parking lot behind the laundromat where I sometimes go to smoke. I stand with a coffee and stare at a puddle reflecting the pipes that peer out from the top of the buildings. Looking into the puddle, with the rain coming down around me, throws off my sense of perspective and I suddenly, for an instant, feel farther from the ground than I really am. It reminds me of waiting at the bus stop as a child, with an umbrella, imagining that I could levitate, that I could fly away.

I wait to hear from you, for you to tell me when you're coming home from your weekend-long date, so we can see each other. So I can talk to you. I haven't let on what I intend to do, and you may suspect, but I don't think you do. I don't think you think I have it in me. There's a lot about me that you never saw, and I've just realized that there was a lot about you that I didn't want to see. Seeing it now has tainted my memories of you, knowing what you would go on to do to me, and it's sad, because memories are all that we have left now.

"If the sky should fall into the sea / And the stars fade all around me / All the times that we have known here / I will sing a hymn to love."

It feels like something has fallen out of me, and if it's fallen to the sidewalk, it's since been washed away. I forgive the sidewalk, and we understand each other, but the difference is this: I will not be walked on.