Where You Left Me

Dearest Carter,

Two seconds after I fell in love with you, I mustered up the courage to speak. And it was the longest two seconds of my life, with you sitting there and not knowing that I was in love with you. Me, sitting across from you and so in love and trying so hard to be black and white instead of gray, and the words were hard to form because they had to be perfect, because you were so perfect, you were so perfect.

“Hi,” I said, and though it wasn’t much it wasn’t nothing. And the words seemed right, and they fit better than “I love you” and they made more sense.

“Long time, no see,” you smiled even though you were being cheesy, which made me want to smack you upside the head but in a cute way, and not a painful way.

“I was afraid maybe after today at the lockers you’d decided to not come around anymore,” I said, and it was so hard to be truthful around anyone but you. The truth came so easily around you for some reason, and it fit and seemed right and I knew it wouldn’t scare you off, even though it was hard, it was so hard.

“I thought about it,” you said, and your eyes were serious but your smile was dazzling. “But then I thought that I’d miss seeing your face, which I would.”

I blushed a dusty rose color and tried to hide behind a book, like I had my whole life, but your hand was there, and you plucked the book out of my fingers like I was a puppet and threw it across the room where it ran into a shelf with a crack that probably broke the binding, which was a shame really. I remember because it was a special-edition of Beloved with an intricate, engraved cover and I winced when it hit the wood as if you had smacked me across the face with it instead.

“You know when you hide you make things a million times harder,” you said, and shrugged, like you were repeating the weather or telling the same story for the tenth time.

“I think that was very deep of you, but I might be wrong,” I said, and I felt so brave when we were being honest like we were. And it was so easy to get caught up in the moment of your smiles and your eyes and everything about you.

“No, you’re right, that was deep of me,” you said, looking both amused and smug and it was sinister in a way, but it was undeniably sexy.

I laughed, and the sound bounced off the books and you smiled directly at me in a sort of blinding way and it was so direct that I wanted desperately another book to hide under, this one big enough to swallow me whole into its pages.

“So I’ve been talking to you this whole time and I don’t know your name,” you looked sheepish, and ducked your head as if you were embarrassed, even though more than anything I was embarrassed. Of course, because I had always known your name doesn’t mean that you always knew mine.

“Eliza,” I said and tried to smile as you reached out across the table and grabbed my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, like two and two equaling four, like the sky being blue and the grass being green. Taking my hand, breathing in and out, it was all like you never had to think twice about it. And did you ever? Did you ever have to think when it came to me, or did it all just come to you? Did you always want to reach out and take my hand? Did you always? And this is again the worst part, questions without answers, sentences that won’t ever be finished, a story that was cut off halfway through, and a movie without a second half.

It’s so horrible and you won’t ever understand it. The worst parts are so many and so vast, and they add up until they’re all I can think about. All the questions I won’t have answers to, all the worrying I will do, all the letters I’ll write trying to tell you a story that ends too quickly, all the hours I will waste thinking about you. I wish nothing more than to forget you, or move on. I just want to be normal. And you must understand, I do not love you any less, but I need myself to move on, I can’t let my entire life be tied around you and your mistakes and your death. I can’t let my life become your death. And I’m so scared of forgetting you, because if I do then it’s like it never happened at all. And so the letters, the letters that will remember these words forever, and though no one else will ever see them, I will knew that they exist somewhere, and hopefully I can forget you better.

I want to forget you. But I can’t, when all my memories revolve around you. I want so many things, but I would want none of this if you hadn’t died in the first place. No, if you hadn’t died then all of the wants would just become you.

I want you. All of the things I want are you in some way. You, who didn’t know my name until I told you a week after we met.

“That’s a lovely name,” you said, and slid your hand out of mine and too late I realized I was supposed to shake it.

“It’s nothing special,” I shrugged and pulled the collar of my sweater up around my chin to hide at least a small amount of my face.

“You keep saying that and it keeps being untrue,” you smirked at me like we had some complex secret between us when nothing seemed to be complex at all.

“Your perception is your reality,” I smiled and tried to sound sweet and charming when I wanted to just run away or jump into your arms.

And by the way, I no longer think that your perception is your reality. Your perception is only how you view your reality. Reality is not something you feel or how you want things to be or how you think things are, reality is the way the wills of other change your life, how one person can touch another, it’s not how you view things in your head, but how others view you and how you view them back. Reality is not one person living and breathing, it is collective breathing and changing, it is something that cannot be forged alone, but requires dozens, hundreds even. Reality is much too strong for one person to handle alone.

“You are fascinating Eliza,” you said and leaned forward on your elbows across the table like I was an interesting piece of art, and it was so strange to see and be seen like this, so strange and so warm.

“I could easily say the same about you,” I said, and shifted in my seat so that my elbow nearly knocked over a nearby tower that was compiled completely of Ray Bradbury novels. “I’ve never met someone quite like you I don’t think.”

“Ah,” you said, and smiled broadly, “that is because there is only one of me.”

“Really? I could’ve sworn you were two separate people,” I chided, trying to be witty, and it seemed to work because you chuckled and grinned at me.

“I knew you were the sarcastic type,” you proclaimed, as if you had just discovered the last digit of pi, or had cured cancer.

“It seems as if you have passed many judgments on me then,” I said softly, because you had leaned so far close that it felt only appropriate to lower my voice in the cavernous library.

“I have indeed,” you said, and laughed as a bluebird swept by the window and spread its wings far against the bitter air and I couldn’t hear its song through the glass, but its beak was open in jubilation, and it was startling beautiful against the gray sky.

“As fascinating as that may be right now,” I said, as I glanced at the clock and began to gather my things, “I have to get home.”

“Can I walk you to your locker?” you asked me, and looked earnest and confident, and it was so fun to mess with you that I had to take you down a peg.

“Not today,” I shrugged, and brushed past you on the way to the door and you told me later that year that it gave you a boner when I touched you which had made me laugh so hard milk shot out of my nose and got on your new white shirts, which made you laugh so hard I thought you were going to pee your pants before you finally controlled yourself.

The hardest part, like I said, is that I will continue when you will not. And I think that nicely sums up all the problems that I have.

Continuing is so hard, and you wouldn’t know because it is not something you have to do any longer, but I do. And though it’s been years since I last stepped foot in that library, I will always picture you there continuing, hunched over a table next to a tower, looking fascinating and alive.

I promise you with all I have that I love you. I love you like I love air and bluebirds and sunshine. I love you like I love every book that I have ever read. I love you like I love grass and not stars. I love you like I love dirt and tangible things, I love you like roots in that dirt that I also love. I love you everything mixed together. I love you more than I love myself, and it is hard to do because when you are gone myself is all that I have to live for.

Well, myself and our story, but I can only spend so much time telling a story that has already been lived.

Yours forever,
Eliza.