Stability

         Soft and smooth, like velvet. That’s what you are.

         You came into my heart like it was a wide open prairie, rather than a garden with a gate and a lock. Not to mention the overgrowth—after the last intruder (the one I had willingly let in?), I let myself grow wild, bloom free. My hair in knots and tangles, natural, and I like it that way.

         I am real. When you cut me, I bleed.

         And you most certainly cut me.

         You, with your soft golden hair and your soft, soft smile. You took my hand, and you took my heart. You took my freedom. You gathered me into your arms on the brisk winds of the spring morning and said, “Let’s paint the world!” You told me I’d be crayons, and you’d be oil paint.

         I should have told you to be chalk. You would have faded faster, been easier to erase. Besides, I wanted to be paint. Vivid, bright acrylic, the colors of a crayon box but more alive. I know that I am composed of primaries—you thought I was pastels, and you tried to tell me so. Soft, and light, and easy. Easily forgettable.

         I want to be memorable.

         You know that whole saying about putting a square peg into a round hole? It is, in fact, quite true. Those toys you play with in nursery school—with the shiny plastic, fire-toy-truck red and police car blue, and CAUTION-CAUTION-CAUTION yellow pegs—you played that game with me, in high school. But I thought I thought, I thought you knew who I was and where I belonged.

         You calculated math, and I drew pictures. I never realized how hard it was for you, how difficult it was for you to sit and come up with the nice things to say to me. It was all very easy for me—I didn’t have to think to tell you that your eyes held me still, and that my heart beat all the blood three times faster around my internal racetrack when you were near. I wasn’t lying when I said that I was never bored around you, and it didn’t take me configuring an algebraic formula to figure out I loved you.

         I feel sorry for you, in a way. You left me, and the second I was out of your sight, you met another. The fact that you can’t let love tie its strings around you, the fact that you can never be attached, saddens me. You can say it’s like a marionette, puppeting and ordering your every move with precision, but I believe it’s a lifeline. Always there, so that when you finally fall off, jump off that cliff, someone’s there to swim your fragile soul to safety. You cling onto them like a buoy, you lean on them like a wall. Because if both of you lean on each other, fully trusting, neither of you will fall.

         Is she pretty? Is she smart? I know she will be both of these things, but that isn’t what breaks my heart. I know I am smart, smarter than most girls, and even though I don’t think I am that much to look at, you’ve always told me that I’m pretty. One time, I even wore the dusty pink dress in front of you, and you told me I looked like a little china doll. No, those weren’t the things that worried me.

         Is she predictable? Because I know that’s what you’re actually looking for. Someone who’s stable, solid, unwavering, unchanging. I might as well say it: someone boring. And if that’s true, and I know it is, then that’s when my heart breaks, and the bitter tears of regret fall down, because that’s when it is all done and over. You will never come back and you will never be mine again. Because if she’s boring than you will certainly have fallen in love with her. Or, at least, as in love as you can possibly be.

         I have crickets to keep my still-beating heart company tonight. You have infatuation. I’m really not that jealous of you. I only envy your temporary happiness, but I know I will be happy again. “What will happen to you,” I wonder, “if you were shattered, broken down into little tiny pieces?” I have the feeling that you would disintegrate into nonexistence, for beneath your logical plateau, what else is there but sand and laughter? I should be thankful I got out while I can.          

         Let me tell you something.

         It makes me sad more than anything. You will stand in front of a brilliant mural, and you will never be moved. You will see creation flourishing and not be stirred. Long tentacles of love and beauty will slowly creep and wrap kindly around your legs and arms and try for your heart, but you will be unaware, as a rock is unaware of moss.

         I mourn for you, my friend. For I will move on, and love again, while you?

         You will never love at all.