I Walk the Line

I watched a movie tonight and I could only think of you. I remembered how you would sing to me and I would smile. I remembered how you danced with me and how we would laugh with joy as we spun and twirled until we were out of breath.  I also remembered how we know each other and what we have been through.  I remember the lives we have lived even though they weren't lived with each other. I remember when you told me you loved me and that you never said it again.  I remember how after you said it I felt your regret.  I can feel the joy intermixed with the heartache that I've felt in the arms of my friend.

The memories are so vivid that I can taste the Lucky Strikes in my mouth and feel the bits of tobacco on my tongue because I could never learn that twirl you do to the end.  I feel that emotion of frustration within me as if I were in that moment now.  I feel the joy. I feel the regret. I can hear the music and the song you sing and I am in your arms once again. 

I can feel myself being mad at you for being intoxicated and obstinate, and being independent and stubborn. Wait, that last part was me.  I can also feel the connection between us and I forget.  I remember the moments like they were yesterday of feeling like we were as one. I forget that you have this other life that I was never a part of.  I forget that you existed before I met you.   I think it comes from where and how we met.  It's almost as though you are a character that just appeared one day in the book I write about my life.

I did not know the day I met you that you would be more to me than just another person in that room.  That is the place I was in when I first met you.  I can only begin to imagine what place you were in even though I listened and heard the pain emanating from within you. I would see pieces of you in people I met through everywhere I traveled from that day onward.

The day I saw you again I felt a spark and realized just how much I missed you. I remember the day I started to pull away and I even knew why; I couldn't stop myself.  Did you know I was pulling away? Did you know I left? If you did, did you know why?  I cannot imagine that your conclusion would have been correct. Unless, that is, that you remembered what a stranger was saying so long ago as she talked in circles of fear and neglect amongst the thoughts of the terrified within that room in which we first met.

No road can be traveled to reach you at this moment; no letter can be sent.  I miss my friend and I cannot tell you that. So, I sit here on Christmas Eve as the clock turns to midnight writing to you knowing that even if you were on this continent tonight, my friend wouldn't be here to dance or to sing to me because your life is elsewhere and also because I left.