Eli

In the night, in the midst of darkness and silence, a thought enters and then a rhythm that thumps in my ears. A heart beat, the blood rushing, and the feeling of being alive. It fills my chest with intensity and it refuses to quiet. A stubborn drum, and the low rumble of my inner voice.

Did I ever tell you how much I loved you? Could I ever convince you that I really did?

The questions swirl around my head constantly, louder than the silence pressing in. My overwhelming conviction to be “good,” to do things “right,” often stopped me from being true to myself. I built walls out of duty and called them virtue. I sought distance when the closeness grew too intense. What would you have done differently if I had told you that I loved you, not in careful, measured words, but in wild, reckless truth? Would we have stayed together if I hadn’t run away?

I have stacks of photographs, memories, letters, books and stories that I never threw away, but not one of them was our story, our pictures or our memory. The only photographs I have are permanently etched in my memory, and I’m glad that I can’t forget, because these are snapshots I never finished looking at. The image has softened with time, but the pulse beneath it hasn’t.

It’s bittersweet to have you here again. Aware of the connection we share, playing out scenarios from a more innocent time. Attempting to be satisfied with just the fact that you’re in my life once more.

But I want to see you.
I want to touch you.
I want to hold you.
I want to kiss you.
Because I miss you.

I missed out on so many things....catching your eye from across the room, inside jokes, and ordinary mornings. What would our arguments be like? What would it feel like to come home to you?

The drum pounds in my ears again. Yet tonight the heartbeat feels less like mourning and more like defiance. I sit down with these scattered fragments of us and begin to shape something new from the ache.

Not perfectly, not safely, just honestly. No audience. No apology. Just the rhythm guiding me like an old lover who refuses to let me forget how to feel.

Outside, the city sleeps. Inside, I am wide awake, lost in the feeling, yet found inside it. Still myself. Still beating. Still hoping, foolishly, beautifully, that one day the silence might answer back.