Love: You Were Just A Boy
I woke up this morning, coming back from a dream, with your name on my tongue, with your face behind my eyelids- magnified smile.
Did any of that really happen?
It feels like a dream, like another life, another girl.
Where did that go?
It isn’t about you,
It’s about that other life, girl, heart.
And how many times,
It was,
Real.
1.First
You were the first, and felt like the only.
Only one, forever.
Young girl, paisley print dress I wore the night we met (I still have that dress), blonde curls, wide eyes soaking up this small town I had come to love once more, searching….
Then –
red flower in my face, orange Clockwork Orange t-shirt, dusky skin, white smile.
Did I know you before? Before messages and poetry and phone calls until 3 am? Before seeing your face for the first time, up close and electric? It felt like I had known you, from some before life, somehow. My heart, pounding from anticipation, seemed to skip a beat in my chest when I saw you –
recognition, premonition?
That first night we did nothing but wander those familiar downtown streets and point out the cats, the fountains, the stars, the spanish moss. Pancakes with your family and moonlight splattered roof.
And you, you, you-
Terrified this girl,
Excited this girl,
Worried this girl.
I had always wondered about that feeling I had read so often about, the feeling I had been searching for since I was a child- secret poetry and shivering sighs. But I’d never felt it, though I had thought maybe before I had come close. But no, no, never before you. I was not expecting that- this. Was I ready for that, for you?
You and gold eyes and dark hair and poetry in the shape of shepherds, tears, moons, stars, snow, car-crashes, death.
You holding my wrists, asking why?
You waiting at the doors to my highschool, me racing through hallways to burst open the doors and jump into your arms- the only home I knew.
This was beyond anything I had ever imagined.
Doll, you called me.
The way I loved you was like a hurricane, uprooting everything I’d ever known before, winds breaking me down, lifting me up to new heights.
The way I loved you was like a night sky galaxy wonder, wishing on all those million stars only to keep this for one more day, hour, minute, second. The way I loved you was like speeding along a deserted highway with no end, racing against wind and time and motion and thought, racing against reality because how could something so beautiful and wonderful and terrible and frightening and intense be allowed to exist?
How could someone be allowed to feel this much, to love this much, to be loved this much, and not be punished?
And I did.
I did.
I did.
Punish.
You,
Me.
Then it was only tears and scars and hollowness in the pit of my stomach, because I had lost the one thing that was the impossible.
I had lost it.
Lost you.
That was the first.
You were the first.
And I do not need to go back.
I do not need to go back
I do not need to go back.
You said once that I am dangerous to love….
Thank you, for showing me what that feeling was, and for showing me what it is to be truly loved.
For braving the danger and loving me anyway.
2. Troubadour
You
knew this girl,
As the broken doll she had become,
Lost the one thing she knew,
The life she was sure of,
In one scattered second,
Everything
Gone.
You:
amber eyes, curls, goofy smile.
You:
Guitar fingers and strong arms.
You:
Soft kisses, with the guardian mother moon hovering closely over that snow-flecked shelter we huddled in.
You:
steady, sweet, silly.
You:
Kissing me confidently on that couch, and holding me close.
Running into you a few days later, walking home in my tights, boots, dress and hooded coat, ignoring the honking horn until you leaned out and called my name so clearly that I had to turn and see, and was surprised.
Riding home in your truck- you’d insisted on giving me a ride- that stalled whenever you hit a red light. Laughing as you battled the traffic lights.
Sushi and movies and bubble tea and stars.
I warned you, from the beginning-
I am chipped and misused,
I am dramatic and intense,
I am sorrowful and unstable-
Heartbroken.
But you pursued persisted- persevered.
And when you followed me to my home, and sang me the song you had written, to me, for me, about falling in love…
There is only so much a girl can resist.
And wet irises, chords on flourescent reflective starlight, simple stirring words- you broke in.
Broke in.
White roses and wine bottles.
Watching the moon rise and lightning strike at my exact birthday,
Holding hands,
Learning,
To,
Open,
Yourself.
Trying,
To,
Open,
Me.
The timing is never right,
the words always come too late,
and all that pain is only bearable for so long.
Oh, but please know, I did learn to love again.
You opened something in me, and I will always be grateful for that, for you.
I am forever in your song, and you are now in my words.
The troubled troubadour
And the broken doll
And now, who we are.
Not meant.
But if I see you on the sidewalk,
At a cafe,
I will smile,
And wish you a good day,
And hope you are happy,
And remember the times we shared with fondness, and no regrets.
3.Dragon
You were the cure,
I thought,
Not knowing I was the affliction.
When we kissed,
And lightning struck,
I took it as an omen.
I didn’t know that,
Dragon’s and faeries don’t intermingle,
I missed the sharp blade of your eyes,
Wrapped in one another,
In a storm of our making.
I gave you my heart and though,
Things were always hard,
I defied it all and fought,
For you were the one I yearned for.
I wed with you in ivory and lace,
On a bright autumn day,
And though I smiled outside to the world,
My heart was somehow crying.
I will love you always, for your beautiful mind,
I will love you always, for the world you gave me,
I will love you always, though that life I leave behind,
You will be in my heart,
A tattoo of loss,
And a regret,
That I lost,
Your innocence.
4. Others
I have fooled myself since then, with others.
A German artist who said he’d like to paint me just then, rosy and flushed with love, content to just be. A tall dark eyed dark haired stranger with golden skin who went too far, too far- and not far enough. An addict who told me he loved me in the moonlight, rode away.
A boy- turned man? – I have known for years who said he’d been in love with me all that time, never said a word, always run away from those thoughts and feelings and needs.
Tattooed boys, punk boys, poets, musicians…
But I’m not the girl I was.
I have opened,
I have shut off,
I have constructed walls,
An ivory tower,
To imprison myself in,
I am not that girl….
I am, hopefully, better,
I am trying to be.
Thank you for those feelings,
for those dreams,
for those wishes,
for those whispered thoughts,
for those poems,
for the letters I still keep,
for the flowers,
for the love.
But that time is gone, and this is now, and the point is to go forward,
only forward.
I am not that girl anymore.
I am cautious, careful, scared, scarred.
I am not that girl.
So beat at my walls.
Scale my tower,
try to touch my fingers on the sill of my overlooking window,
But until you prove yourself…
This,
heart,
is,
my,
own.
( ⧫ I wrote part of this when I was 22, and some of it I added onto when I was 27, before many chapters of this book had even come to pass. I learned a lot about love after writing this. But, this is part of who I was, and the woman I am still becoming.)
“I was lingering again on my way to school. And I wish that our minds had a journal we could mentally review. Wouldn’t that be kick ass? I could go back and read the exact thoughts I was having yesterday at approximately 1:05:28 seconds. I’d love that. My hands are stained with pastels. Yay!”
(⧫ Hand written journal entry from 2004)
Elisabeth Writing 