Memories

I barely convinced them to let me go. The weather was supposed to be bad, and they were worried, and didn't want me to have an accident. And I begged, and I pleaded, and I looked up weather maps and spent hours asking them again and again and again. So they let me go. They let me leave. The weather was nice. There was no rain, no thunder, nothing dangerous. The construction was confusing at points, but I didn't care.

Because through it all, I was going to see you. Three hours of driving was nothing to me. Three hours of beautifully empty stretches of road and loud, beautiful music was good. More than that though, it was the thought that I would see you. I barely slept that night. And I was coming off a week with little enough sleep as it was. I could feel my eyes slipping shut every once in a while, and sometimes I worried that they wouldn't open. But they always did.

So I got there early, and I wound up waking you up. I sat on a bench in a park in a strange town that had no attachments for me and I waited for you. We talked and it was nice, and I felt the hours slip away, and then you had to go, somewhere to be, but you'd be back, you said, by three o'clock. I went out for a lunch, walked despite the heat, I looked at the people I passed as my surroundings became once more familiar, and I wondered how many times you might have walked on the sidewalks that my shoes were hitting now.

I came back and I ate in my car. It was hot. Hotter without the air conditioner, but I didn't turn it on because I didn't want to waste gas. When I finished eating, it was 1:30. So I sat around. And then it was 2, then 2:30, then 3. I sat in the front seat, the back seat, the picnic table we had been on together mere hours ago, and back behind the wheel with the windows rolled down, waiting.

Then it was 3:30, and I had been wondering where you were, and then you called. I was tired. I wanted to sleep. I didn't want to drive to the library, I didn't care to be anywhere else. So you put up with me, you walked out and sat in the car next to me, and you reached over and you kissed me, despite the fact that it was uncomfortable and it was hot and I had been sweating. We moved back out to the picnic table, and there was a breeze. But it was already 4:30, and I would have to leave soon.

Walking back to my car, holding your hand lightly, and realizing that I was leaving it all behind. The day was like a dream, like something that had never happened. And even as we stood there, after I'd unlocked the car, and we held each other, and we kissed for the last time in god knows how long...it wasn't real.

Before I knew it, I was driving back. Music covering the sounds of the car and the road and the whole world around me. For three hours, I had nothing else to think about. I had just been with you. It was not special. It was not incredible. But it had meant that I could be with you, if only for a few hours, if only one day out of months, if at the expense of six hours in a car. And I would do it all again in an instant.

When I left that day, I didn't know what would happen. I didn't know if things would be the same. If you had asked, I couldn't have explained what had compelled me to drive all the way there for the sake of several hours and a couple of kisses that day. And I drove back in melancholy, happy because I had seen you, exhausted from the past week, and bitter because I didn't know...

Now I sit here writing this, some time later, when I should be working, when I shouldn't be thinking about you. And you're gone, and I probably won't talk to you for another week. Good god, it's one week, I'll live. But I can't stop thinking, and I can't stop writing, and I don't know if I like how this is all coming out in words.

Because this is the sort of thing I feel I should be writing after it's all over. When it all falls apart. When I'm sitting here trying to explain how much I should hate you but don't, and the flaws in all of those moments and the tears that I shed on so many nights. But it's not over. Or at least I don't think it is. And I don't know why I keep remembering that, or how your fingers felt on my arm or your head leaning against mine or the way your eyes looked in that light when you said you could see the trees and the sky reflected in mine.

It'll be a week before you read this, if you ever do. And you and I both know that a week can change everything. Rational or not, I'm worried that it will. I'm worried that I will forget those moments and those hugs. So now I'm lost in my mind, and I'm drowning myself in memories. And I remember this and I remember something else and I remember so many things that I never want to forget.

I don't know what I'm saying, or why I'm even writing anymore. I don't know what the point of this is or ever was, or what anybody will think when they read it. And I wonder if this is terrible writing or if maybe it's good if only because it came out when nothing else would. But it doesn't really matter, I know it doesn't. Maybe the only thing that does is that I miss you. And not just right now.