It’s Not Your Fault
Your presence has been with me for over twenty years now, never quenching my scorched silent desires. I have created a you, as an escape from my mental anguish, a you that never was and never could have been. We have been rejoined a thousand times in memories distorted by time and shaped to fit my needs. Dreams contain no resolve for your absence, only in the light of day or moon filled skies do you return.
You come on scents wafting from a passing stranger’s cologne and my heart stops beating as I try to see any resemblance in his face or walk, but no … it is not there. A voice captures my attention and I seek the source only to be pushed harshly back into the reality of your absence.
A foolish old woman gazes back from my mirror, worn and lacking that sparkle that once shone like the night sky highlighting a blazing falling star. No blush to her cheeks, only pallor and etchings of un-fullfillment make up the canvas she has long ago stopped painting. It is she who tells the true story of our short time together and taunts me with accusations of embellishing the entire tryst. Her gaze falls on an empty bed, a hand not entwined with yours, no strong arms around her waist and she refuses to remember when this was not true.
It is not your fault that I have spent these countless moments wearing out your memory. I am guilty, the one who took the moments and froze them in time to satisfy my longing that, somehow, it would have become so much more. If only it had been unrequited love, my pain would not be so intense. If I knew that your mind never wanders to the time we had, then, perhaps, this place in my soul would wither and die. It is the not knowing, the what-if’s that have kept me prisoner these long years and though I have gone on and I have loved again and well, there will never be another you. It’s not your fault that I have never let go.
