Love Not Sent

I dreamt about you last night and when I woke up it was like losing you all over again. I lay in my bed aching to feel your touch, aching to feel your grace. Your smile dominated the dream only adding glorious detail to your charms once forgotten. Your laughter was the sound track and your voice struck chords that haven’t been played in years. Once again I held you in my arms, once again I felt your heart beat against my chest. Your soft breasts pressed against me as I stared into your brown eyes more precious than any stone mined by man.

When I looked into your eyes I realized that I still loved you. That I’ve always loved you. That I will always love you. I know it’s crazy to say that. How crazy it is to even think that. But in my bones I know it is true.

You are not the person today that I loved then and I’m not the person you couldn’t love then. I love the girl you were. I doubt you even resemble her today. Yet I’d like to get the chance to find out. So many things have gone wrong for me in my life. Getting you back is the one thing that could make up for them all.

I think the most frustrating thing, about the whole thing, is that I never fought for you. I just let you slip away because it was the practical thing to do. It was the thing that I should do. It was the “adult thing” to do. 

I hate myself for that-for acting logical and reasonable. I should have fought for you. I should have fought for us. You never gave me a chance to reclaim your love. 

I knew you were happy with him. That he was safe and something you could depend on. He is more your style, something that you can predict, something that you can control. What you didn’t realize was that you completely controlled me. I was your loyal subject and you were my queen. Your every wish was my command and you didn’t realize it. 

Maybe you were too wounded to allow yourself to see how completely I belonged to you. Maybe that was my downfall. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps you knew that you completely dominated me and what you really wanted was a challenge. When we were done I never heard from you, never saw you look my way with fire in your eyes. Perhaps that is the most telling thing.

Once we were over you never put yourself in a position to be tempted. You never were in a position that could possibly lead you back sliding to me. I remember you missed the mixer between our Greek organizations because you were trying to avoid a situation. Maybe you thought I would be unrelenting in my attempts upon your virtue. I probably would have said something but  I always respected and loved you too much to have been overwhelming. I’m sure you heard that I had a cute blonde haired girl against the wall. That I went upstairs with her. But know this-I would trade a million nights, with a thousand girls, for just one more night with you.

I still remember our first date. A twilight walk around Audubon Park. It was late spring and the temperature was perfect. The setting sun created a beautiful palette of colors in the heavens. It was as if a fiery crown of a diamonds was set on the dark brow of the horizon. 

The path was darker than the rest of the park. The early dim created by the arching canopy of oak tree limbs, dripping with Spanish moss.. The shrouded dark path was only penetrated by the glowing halos cast by the lights lining the path. 

We walked hand in hand along the path. You were the definition of beauty with a flowing purple skirt and white blouse. In those clothes, with your dark hair and bronze skin, you reminded me of ancient stories of beautiful gypsy women. How perfectly appropriate. You stole my heart and never gave it back.

I was terrified that night. I was afraid that you would reject me. I was afraid that you would see me for who I truly was at that point. A scared little boy stuck in a young man’s body. Despite my fears I was rewarded with a good night kiss when I walked you to your car. I remember later you complained that the walk gave you blisters. If I had known I would have carried you the entire way. I would have found the strength somewhere. Your kiss brought me higher than any drug and kept me on that plane for a longer time than any drug could ever do.

Then it was over. When everything was said and done you still could make my knees shake. The mere sight of you would make my heart go into palpitations. Your vision made my legs quake and I was reduced to something I was never before then and haven’t been since. This is how I know I really loved you and that I just didn’t lust for you. You were the only person who ever literally made me weak in the knees. I’ve been punched in the face more times than I can count and I’ve never even come close to being knocked down by one of those punches. Yet the mere sight of you was almost enough bring me crashing down.

Stop. Forget everything I said. Forget everything I wrote before. I don't mean it. I don't want to mean it. The most terrible thing was realizing how insignificant I was to your life. I was nothing but a foot note in a thousand page disclosure. Isn’t that life though? Thinking you are one thing and realizing that you are something completely different. The brightest period of my life summarized in a series of unflattering picture in yours. Looking like the joke I really am in those pictures cut me deeper than anything before. I have felt cold steel penetrate my flesh and it couldn’t compete with seeing myself diminished like that. 

I was nothing but a spark between forest fires. A simple distraction in a crowd of millions. A voice rising for a second over the dim of the crowd before it was drowned out forever. No record of what I said or did. 

No one has ever made me feel so inadequate, so imperfect and so incapable. But that is why I will always love you. Why I can never forget you. Because you always remind me of what I really am-nothing. The only hope that I have is a dream that you are trying to wipe me clean. To forget that I ever existed. Perhaps you regret how things turned out. But I know in my bones that this isn’t true.

I know now we never could be together. This is why I can’t pursue you. I would have sacrificed my dreams and ambitions upon the altar of your love. I have such grand ambitions that they cannot be subject to the tides of love. It would have been too tempting to give you everything that you deserved. I would have destroyed the world for you. I would have cheated and manipulated, deceived and destroyed just to give you what you wanted. That is why I know that we can never be. That we should never be. You are my Achilles’ heel and no one knows who you are. 

I beg you not to come to me, not to find me. In my mind as I write this I see you reading these words and finally hearing all the things I never could say but should have said. Maybe these words in their truthfulness and earnestness might tempt you to reach out and rekindle a fire that burned out years and year ago. Don't. 

I bear my cross alone and as much as I would love to send this letter I can't. If you ever come across this don't reach out to me, Do not contact me for I have drowned your memory in gallons of whiskey and barrels of wine. I am a shell of a man, unable to love again and unwilling to change. I still love you but that doesn’t matter. From that night in New York where I barred my soul to you I know that it never mattered. I’ll pretend that I’m alive tomorrow even though I died years ago with a simple text that merely stated, “I’m only sending this because you asked me to tell you if I’m seeing someone before you came back. I am".

So I’ll finish this bottle of wine, just like the last one. I’ll curl up on my floor where I fell and think that I could have been happy. It’s such an abstract idea that I’ll never really believe it but I'll try. I hope you don’t feel bad after reading this-if you ever read this. The time to feel bad was years ago when I still really loved you. Not your memory. You might have saved millions by denying your love to me. I would have just been content with your smile. With your laugh. I wouldn’t have this need to save the world if I had you besides me. I would have just been happy with making you happy. 

I only ask you one thing. When they cut me down put flowers on my grave to let me know I didn’t die in vain. That perhaps I did mean something to you. I don’t ask you out of love because you made it clear you never loved me. Just do it because I rescued you from the darkness that eventually consumed me.