Please Stay

Someone just dropped a boulder through my stomach. It's knotting around itself and latching onto all of my insides. I'm not sure if that is even a real thing, but knots and pressure and twisting at the pit pf my stomach are all I can feel Please don't walk over here. Remember the first night you kept your hand on my side--slid tips of your fingers, and then the inside of your palm, underneath my shirt and along the smooth, semi-hidden, skin there?

God--why am I even thinking about that, now, here? You can't even say hi to me here.
Please don't come over here.

A flash of your blue eyes zaps my mouth dry. It's like your very existence is pushing, shoving at my sternum. I fight to breathe, but my lungs can't expand. Please don't come closer. Each step you take is a tread on my chest. I can't feel any air.

Your hands move from my side to my back. Your breath is hot on my neck--shocks run through my spine and out to fingertips. Please stay over there.

Months and miles separate you and I, and yet--and yet--

You're standing too close. I can see the hitch in your mouth--that beginning of a smile--remember when you laughed (a roaring belly laugh) that first night when I used my passport to get into the bar? I refused to trade in my expired license because I didn't want a real-adult one yet. You barked your laughter at me before chiding, "It think it might be time to be a grown-up, Erin." I was right to not want to be a grown-up.

Please don't come any closer. Lips and hands and smooth, hot skin--I feel the corny-romance-movie montage of it all--the heat, the friction--You're here.

And yet--and yet...

You were never really here; not even a million miles away,
but you never existed at all.

We never could have been;
we never could have been as I remember

                                       If we really exist as we do now
                                       In totally different orbits--no--universes.
Please stay over there.

Why am I plagued of visions and feelings that could have never been?
If you really held me so close, then how are we so lost; how are we so far from what I remember?
And yet--and yet...

Your voice strikes a chord in my soul. Your voice plucks at the memories.
The memories that flood my vision now--Now that you're here. Please don't come any closer.

Maybe, I'm slow. Maybe it's just me,
That struggles to separate the Us that was, and the Us that stands here, across a valley we can't seem to bridge.

So I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I can't remember.
I'm sorry I can't remember to forget.
So please don't come any closer.
I don't know you now.
And my body can't forget you then.