For the girl I knew without ever really knowing at all.
I imagined your thighs being the color of heavy cream even though I could see from the way the hem of your dress flirted and kissed your knees that they were a syrupy, sun-kissed caramel. I saw your photo the other day. You’re still beautiful. It made me remember that time I came over just to watch you do laundry. My breath stuck in my throat the whole drive to your home until it escaped in a shaky somber exhale upon the realization I’d never be fool-hardy enough to risk looking foolish, enough to steal a kiss from your bee-stung lips. For the longest time I’d thought I’d forgotten you, till like everything always eventually does you came forward from the recesses of my memory to remind me - I never really forget anything. And you’re still beautiful. You floated through my mind like a daydream and I recalled all the romanticized fantasies I’d once concocted of our almost summer romance. Tracing the lyrics to sad folk songs along your body with my tongue. Connecting your freckles like constellations with butterfly kisses. The pair of us sprawled across the floor wearing next to nothing, so hot from the heat we’d suck on ice chips in an effort to keep cool enough to still wander our hands across our bodies like road maps. I wanted to pluck and strum your bones like a guitar, learn how to play you in tune. Tug your hair in my hands, make the glimmer in your eyes flicker. I wanted more than just to touch you. I wanted to tumble into your eyes, fall in puppy love with the way you yawn, how your bruises look like rorsarch patterns. Thinking of you makes me homesick for something that doesn’t exist. I told myself you were the roots beneath my feet, in front of me. I didn’t want you to be simple. You were the trail I’d once climbed in the highlands, twisted and complicated, but with a view so clear I could see for miles. Could see into the future. Surrounded by so many trees, I would get drunk on oxygen. I remember staying awake with you, on opposite ends of the room, willing you to move. Farther from the disappoint you’d left sleeping in your bed. Closer to the crook of my hips, my hands, my skin. You’re an unfinished novel where I keep re-writing the end. It’s a pattern of behavior I’ve perfected. I fall in love with shadows and fun house reflections. Did you romanticize me too? My roaming, rambling, big city ways. Did I represent distance? A dream deferred? Did you dress me up in your head just to peel the layers in your mind? I hope you don’t feel cheap. I promise I paint you only in blues and golds. Seeing you again reminded me of how I always ended your mix tape the same way. With a song about a beggar and queen, lonely and irresistible on a late late night that I know you like. Something that unequivocally exposed me for a charmer. A song to sweep you off your feet. Some days I’m sorry we don’t still talk. Then, I’m not sorry at all. I’m always falling in in love with my own version of the truth. A photograph and a fantasy is rarely a fair fight versus reality. When I remember you this way you are all white teeth and flushed cheeks. You’re beautiful, forever.