Upside-ways

Upside-ways

     Two-and-a-half years ago she walked into my life and turned everything on itself with just one flick of her long smooth black hair. Since then everything’s been upside down and sideways for me, just spinning in circles, climbing higher and higher, still stuck in free fall. My head’s solidly grounded in reality but my soul flies among the clouds. Somewhere, my hands reach to pull myself together, but deep inside my mind knows it must ascend as well, for my spirit can no longer be bound.

     Since she showed up, nothing else has mattered because everything else has mattered so much more. Success no longer brings satisfaction; failure is easier to shrug off and walk away from. My smothering humility hides both wins and losses behind its shadowy cloak. The color black has become the brightest of all for me-black, like her hair-a shadow’s embrace around my heart. I’ve said as much as I can by saying nothing at all, at least when I’m around them, around her, because my mind reminds me that those who should be trustworthy should not be trusted. They have no idea; they don’t know the half of it. My best friends have always been my worst enemies. I fear them, I fear her, I like them, I love her, and all I do is take up a chair.

     She is, in short, what I am not. She’s a masterful swimmer, and I stick to the shore. I’m alone in a dark room while she parties away her nights. She’s an idealist, and I am nothing but stone cold reality. My pessimism is matched by her optimism, my weakness by her strength. She is an atheist, and I am God. Perhaps it is our dichotomy which breeds my fear of her, and probably her fear of me; I would not dare to ask. Yet for all this separation and all my doubts, my heart still flutters when she greets me.

     What happened two-and-a-half years ago? Now I cannot even recall. Somehow fate brought us to meet one another, and everything built upon itself from there. But no matter what was, is, or might have been, we remain strangers today. It kills me; who knows what she thinks on the matter-if she thinks on it. Surely she does not dream of me as I do of her. Dreams! Those precious few which her face graces are the best as they unfold. When my mind intervenes and tears them in two and I leap back to reality, when I look around in tears and feel my heart bleed, I see that, whether she knows it or not, she’s turned my life upside-ways. I hate it. I hate her.

     I love it. I love her.