Autumn

It smells the same here.  Walking back from dinner, with the sun going slowly down, wearing the same sweatshirt I borrowed a year ago, it felt familiar again.  The crisp air, the chill breeze, the familiarity of warmth flooding over frigid, rosy cheeks, it hasn't changed.  I don't like this season, but I do like the comfort of it all.  It's not the same and I know it never will be.  Nonetheless, it's not new, and that's something I've been craving a bit lately.

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I miss that bench and that pond and that hill and the grass where we first had sex because face it, it was having sex not making love because the love was already there and having sex didn't change it and didn't make it any more or less so.  I miss that place because it gave you to me and me to you and because it was magical and when I say it was magical I mean that some things happened that I'll never forget and some things felt the way they're never going to feel again because that's just the way it works.

And it's not that I want back how confusing it all was or how much it all hurt and how many times we hurt ourselves and each other and her and her and me and you and everyone else around us, but I just miss the magic and I miss the moments and I miss the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen ever again and standing behind the pond hugging for way too long even though we shouldn't have and being pressed against you in the corridor and nervously laughing at everything you said and listening to your music because it meant I was learning about a piece of you.

I miss the process of getting to know you and falling in love, of the cascade of steady little pieces trickling down from when we first talked about her on that bench to when I told you I loved you in the same place so many months later.  Or maybe it wasn't really that many.  I'm never going to miss that place because of what it was, in the strictest, most literal sense.  But I'm always going to miss it because that's where I grew up, that's where I became the person I am, that's where I learned how to love and how to hurt and how to break.

So even though it's really nice to know how to be functional and make things work and be happy where I am and not be breaking, part of me is always going to miss the magic of the time and place where I was.  It defines me in the same way she defines a piece of you, because if it weren't for that, you could never have been the same person, and even if it's not something I want to relive, it's something I think about often, miss a good bit, and will never forget.

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My deepest apologies for the gush of emotion that came many hours after I started this post.  It just happens sometimes.  I hope you don't mind too much.