A Book I'm Going to Write
Drive
I wonder how long I'll love him.
I wonder how long loving him will be a part of defining myself.
I wonder if I'll always come back to him.
I wonder if I'll ever be able to be here and not think of him.
Fluorescent lights illuminate the streets, their reds and greens sticking out starkly against the deep black sky. Green light after green light, my car glides. It feels motionless, as though it is drifting but just a few inches off of the ground. The winter winds and night air carry it along the highway.
I pass places that used to mean something more to me, now they are just buildings. Buildings occupied by people looking to occupy their time. It's the Target that we would walk through holding hands, the super market where I got my first speeding ticket with you in the passenger seat, the movie theatre where I found myself content next to you. Now its just a Target, just a super market, just a movie theatre, they no longer hold that meaning- perhaps they hold even less meaning now that I have left and come back.
There is something about returning to a place after leaving it. It is strange how a place can mean so much when you're somewhere else. The possibilities seem endless, as though this is exactly the escape you needed from your current reality. But you find upon returning that it's not the place you actually miss, its who you were there years ago. You don't miss the old Target, you miss the girl that walked through its aisles- young, naive, in love. Your expectations of home will always surpass reality. Who you are and the version of yourself that you take constantly changes and shifts based on what life asks of you. You can't be that girl anymore; the one with all the meaningful memories in this small meaningless town.
It's kind of a little bit like you. You were my home at one point. You were so meaningful; you meant everything to me. I think each time you come back to me I so unrealistically convince myself that your presence will bring back the me I was when I was with you. Just as easily as my head finds the nook between your chest and your arm, like old times, I hope that we can find the love and happiness that once was. But that's not how it works, not how life works. Our lips still fit together like two pieces of a broken locket, our bodies navigate easily in silence as though programmed to do so, but you are a new you and I am no longer the old me.
I wonder how we got here; how we changed so much that at times its hard to even recognize each other. You broke my heart and in rebuilding it I was forced to remodel myself. I constantly tore you down and in doing so I rewired your outlook on us, on love. I wonder if we can ever get back; if our constantly changing identities will finally rest on two versions that were as compatible as once before. Maybe I'll find you again in another life, maybe the next.
If only love were simple, if only this realization that timing isn't right, that we are two different people now, could sway me from intoxicating myself with thoughts of you night after night. If only we could agree to abstain, to let each other grow, to stop coming back when its clear that it is just not our time. And love is many things but it is not simple, so my heart will continue to beat for you against my head's best wishes. You will continue to come back, to shatter the glass vase each time I piece it back together. But that's okay, I'm not sure I would want to change this current reality any who. It's a shame, those that analyze their lives too much. As though the present isn't made up of so many futures, as though each moment doesn't happen and end within milliseconds. You can't predict the future, can barely predict the right now. But you can look at the past...
Christmas lights cling to the branches of the trees, illuminating its skeleton. Like lightning bugs they twinkle, they guide my way home. The car continues to glide, two hands on the wheel and four wheels beneath me, I pass more places- places that once meant something.
I wonder how long loving him will be a part of defining myself.
I wonder if I'll always come back to him.
I wonder if I'll ever be able to be here and not think of him.
Fluorescent lights illuminate the streets, their reds and greens sticking out starkly against the deep black sky. Green light after green light, my car glides. It feels motionless, as though it is drifting but just a few inches off of the ground. The winter winds and night air carry it along the highway.
I pass places that used to mean something more to me, now they are just buildings. Buildings occupied by people looking to occupy their time. It's the Target that we would walk through holding hands, the super market where I got my first speeding ticket with you in the passenger seat, the movie theatre where I found myself content next to you. Now its just a Target, just a super market, just a movie theatre, they no longer hold that meaning- perhaps they hold even less meaning now that I have left and come back.
There is something about returning to a place after leaving it. It is strange how a place can mean so much when you're somewhere else. The possibilities seem endless, as though this is exactly the escape you needed from your current reality. But you find upon returning that it's not the place you actually miss, its who you were there years ago. You don't miss the old Target, you miss the girl that walked through its aisles- young, naive, in love. Your expectations of home will always surpass reality. Who you are and the version of yourself that you take constantly changes and shifts based on what life asks of you. You can't be that girl anymore; the one with all the meaningful memories in this small meaningless town.
It's kind of a little bit like you. You were my home at one point. You were so meaningful; you meant everything to me. I think each time you come back to me I so unrealistically convince myself that your presence will bring back the me I was when I was with you. Just as easily as my head finds the nook between your chest and your arm, like old times, I hope that we can find the love and happiness that once was. But that's not how it works, not how life works. Our lips still fit together like two pieces of a broken locket, our bodies navigate easily in silence as though programmed to do so, but you are a new you and I am no longer the old me.
I wonder how we got here; how we changed so much that at times its hard to even recognize each other. You broke my heart and in rebuilding it I was forced to remodel myself. I constantly tore you down and in doing so I rewired your outlook on us, on love. I wonder if we can ever get back; if our constantly changing identities will finally rest on two versions that were as compatible as once before. Maybe I'll find you again in another life, maybe the next.
If only love were simple, if only this realization that timing isn't right, that we are two different people now, could sway me from intoxicating myself with thoughts of you night after night. If only we could agree to abstain, to let each other grow, to stop coming back when its clear that it is just not our time. And love is many things but it is not simple, so my heart will continue to beat for you against my head's best wishes. You will continue to come back, to shatter the glass vase each time I piece it back together. But that's okay, I'm not sure I would want to change this current reality any who. It's a shame, those that analyze their lives too much. As though the present isn't made up of so many futures, as though each moment doesn't happen and end within milliseconds. You can't predict the future, can barely predict the right now. But you can look at the past...
Christmas lights cling to the branches of the trees, illuminating its skeleton. Like lightning bugs they twinkle, they guide my way home. The car continues to glide, two hands on the wheel and four wheels beneath me, I pass more places- places that once meant something.