Ready, Aim, Fire

Nobody ever meant for it to end up this way. People always talk about the dark and stormy night, but ours was actually calm and clear. Not a cloud in sight. No storms to be seen, not a raindrop on the horizon. One dark, swirling sky, waiting and watching, for all that would happen underneath it. It was you and me. I was falling, hard. I don’t think you knew. I still don’t think you know. We were here, and we were there. We were everywhere. A few simple mistakes led us together, and we collided, head on. You were you, and I was me. It was cold and only getting colder. The first little freshness of fall. All we could do was talk, talk, talk about absolutely everything. On and on we went and it never seemed to stop. I smiled ear to ear so much it hurt. When you laughed, I was ready to melt into a puddle. 

You, with your golden blonde hair, so casually swept to the side, as if you didn’t do anything to it. It always looked as if it just found its way there on its own. You wore a black long sleeve shirt, before you gave into the cold and put on a sweatshirt. Me, with my dark brown hair, handing in crazy waves just past my shoulders. It tumbled down onto my mustard sweater that would soon be covered by a gray coat. You said you’d take me anywhere, anywhere and everywhere, twice. Once at the beginning, and once at the end. I thought I was destined for a happy ending. I’d never felt my heart beat faster. The world had certainly stopped to wait for us that day. How sad of us to waste its time.

You had stars in your eyes and dreams on your mind. Me, like the Italians say, with my heart in my hand. It was good. It was unlike anything I thought we’d ever seen before, unlike anyone had seen before. I guess you didn’t see it. Now you have love in your heart, so much of it, and it’s all for someone else. There’s warmth in your eyes, and your life is aglow. You light up rooms when you walk in, and you don’t even want to notice me. I want to be happy for you, but I want to be happy for me. I want you to not be what makes me happy. I want to be free from the crushing weight of a crush. I want it to have been a blooming, blossoming, billowing, love. But the hope died. The bottom fell out. I won’t hold on past what we almost had. 

Now we’re friends, just friends, and nothing more. Never anything more. It’s great, it’s nice, it’s fine, but it makes my heart ache. Oh, it aches. At the thought and the wonder of what could have been. Of what could have happened. The last dying glimpse of possibility. Maybe if you’d felt it too. Maybe you did. Now I’m stuck in the wonder and the after and the thinking and the constant loop. Do you think about it? Has it crossed your mind? Once? Twice? Ever? Maybe even for a millisecond? A slight moment dedicated to me after all of the time I’ve agonized over what you threw away between us. Oh if things were different. But they aren’t. 

I could relive that first night we met over and over, a million times. To feel the butterflies and goosebumps and nerves of all kinds. Maybe even to turn, go in another direction and never meet you at all. Then I’d spare myself all of this hurt, this anguish. I really don’t want to relive that night. Sometimes I think I might try to, and rewrite it in a new way, give it a new way, but that can never really be done. I know in my heart I’d never get it quite right. When it comes down to it, it’s already happened, it’s long gone, and I’m now here, and you’re now there. She’s got you, and I’ve got me. I never saw this coming. I saw anything coming except this, but they’ve always said, “love is blind.” They’ve always said, “you can’t lose something you never had.” I guess I proved them right, huh? 

One of the saddest words out there is almost. The maybes and the kind-ofs and the sort-ofs. The not quites. The perhaps and the perchance. And maybe saddest of all, comes the never. Oh, but we missed the mark. We were ready, aimed, and we fired. And we missed by a long shot. I’ll never know how exactly it all happened, how exactly everything fell apart. Maybe it was both of us, maybe it was all me, maybe it was even all you. I can get over it, I promise myself. I wouldn’t do it for you. It was all for me. All along. It was about finding myself. Sometimes, maybe you have to get a little lost before you can do that. Maybe you have to get a little hurt before you can heal. 

There were always the “just rights” and maybe that is me for now. Maybe letting you go was making time to find me. Maybe that was my destiny. To get hurt, pick myself up, and carry on. Fall down seven times, stand up eight, right? That sounds like a good plan. You were my never, and I was my always. Maybe that is the true meant to be. Not you and me. You. and. Me. Each all off on their own, having their own life and their own separate adventure. Sure, maybe we started together, that one night, but life is waiting for us. We must go live it. Together, if we would have so chosen, but now apart, as we twist and turn through new trials, we carry on in new ways. We ready, aim, and fire, and sometimes, we miss, but sometimes, we make it. And when we do, oh my, it is magic.