Post It Notes

I have a notes section on my laptop that looks a lot like a ton of post it notes. Here I like to leave little notes and songs and movies and thoughts. I haven’t looked at them in a while. Mostly I just add something and click them away again. But, sometimes I like to look at them. Look at the things I thought were important enough to keep noted as to not forget them. I looked at them today and realized how many of them were for you. Places we should go, songs you made me feel, pictures you would laugh at. You were the one I shared all my thoughts with. You were like a second stream of my brain. Nothing I thought or analyzed was complete until you had thought it too. Until your eyes hadn’t been stranger to the things I saw and that laugh you laugh with your head thrown back would ring true in my ears.

I think I will delete my notes I kept for you. You haven’t seen them, but they’re useless if I don’t get to hear the roar and hear the inevitable wonder in your voice. They’re useless when I can’t show them to you because your thoughts are somewhere else. They’re useless without your stream linked to mine. So I think I will delete my notes I kept for you. You haven’t seen them, you never will.

The Last String

Today, I cut my last string to you. A string I always thought could never be cut, ripped, broken, torn. I never thought of it as a string, in fact. Instead it was an iron mast, strong and sturdy, comparable to one that held up bridges or maybe skyscrapers. Thought it to be strong enough to hold thousands of tons of concrete, materials thrown together to play an unquestioned piece of someone’s life. I thought it was an iron mast, or maybe a steel track, guiding the longest of paths without a doubt in a conductor’s mind.

As I am with many things, I was wrong. Today I cut my last string to you. Just like a puppet, I needed that string. Thought I needed it to hold me up, keep me ready for my next move, needed it to be who I was when I was with you: dependent and waiting.

I cut it. I fell. I fell the way a glass of water falls when you aren’t paying attention and you put it down and think that it can still make it, it just landed at a weird angle, but it doesn’t: it falls. It splashes, it pours and all you can do is try and grab it and hope you can still catch the rest of what was left in the glass.

I caught the glass and it turns out there’s still some water left inside. Water ready to be drunken when a sturdier hand is its master. Ready, when it won’t be poured out, but drunken with the intention of acknowledgement, not accident.

Today, I cut my last string to you. Now I know it wasn’t an iron mast, it wasn’t the steel tracks trusted for a trusted way home. It was a string, just a simple string. Who knew it was just a flimsy string?

The First Time

“All of it?” She asked, turning around to look at him.

“Yeah, all of it.” He answered slowly, making sure she picked out the truth in his voice. Making sure she felt the certainty on his breath.

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“Even the broken ones?”

“Yes.”

“What if you hurt yourself? They’re not safe. I don’t know what could happen.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“What if I’m not okay?”

“I’ll hold them for you.”

“What if I forget some of them?”

“Give them to me when you find them.”

“What if I lost some?”

“We can look for them, but we don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to.”

“Some of them might be far away. It could be hard to get to them. You know how the years go by and we hoard and we pile and we consume and we collect and-”

“-I know”, he interrupted.

“You know?”

“I know. I know we keep too many things. I know we keep too many things without knowing we’ve stored them away deep in a pitch black corner. That we don’t do it to keep them but just to know they existed. I know you kept things, things I might never see. Maybe I have too. I think we all have that tiny cupboard full of tiny things that are really the big things. The biggest things.”

“If you know that, why do you want them?”

“Because, I never want to be a tiny thing in your tiny cupboard, pretending not to be the big thing. The biggest thing. I never want to be shoved into the pitch black corner. I will take every tiny thing you have and I will adore it. All of them. Even the broken ones. Even the lost ones. Even the hidden ones. I want all of them.”

“Ok.”

It was the first time someone had asked for it all. For all of them. For all dark ones, for all the bright ones. So, she gave him everything and she knew it was right.

What I See

People say we look good together. That the blue in your eyes matches the white of my hair and the spring in my step reaches out to the brood in your walk. People say we try for the other, we laugh at each other, that we compliment one another.

I don’t see that. I don’t see you and me. I don’t see us. I don’t see it.

I see you. Your outline when you escape beneath a blanket. Your shadow when the last candle flickers it’s last breath. I see the way your eyes droop with laziness when the hours become young again. I see the sinking holes in your hands waiting to be filled and I see the crescent in your neck where I know I fit perfectly.

Truth is, I will never see us. I will always just see you. I see you, that is all I need.

Too much

We have so many things. Objects, unnecessary mementos which we do not part from. Too many tools and items we convince ourselves we need. Everything we own, if we tried to hold it all at once, we couldn’t. It is simply too much to hold every separate thing we own. We cant hold everything in our hands. That would be too much. So we invented shelves and boxes and drawers. We put everything in its place. The place we have decided it belongs. Sometimes not even decided, just assumed. We think it fits in with the other things we have hidden there. Then, we fill up our respective purse or backpack or pockets and are on our way, not realizing every single thing we are carrying around.

It is too much to think of every separate moment you have had. Every moment we had. Every laugh, every kiss, every stolen stare is too much to hold. Every tear shed can’t be contained to my hand. Not even a second hand would help. So I pack every one into a box and put it away, far away under the schoolbooks and old clothes to peer at again one day. Contained to one box. Just one box. One box I will gladly look through one memory at a time when time is all it was. A thing of the past tangible only through holding an old note or shirt. When the memories have long past been erased from my every thought and must be stirred by the scent of an old sheet. I’ll gladly look at it with fondness when fond thoughts are what they are. But not yet.

Now, I’ll hide you and all your things, somewhere I trust and don’t look often. Somewhere I put other things I own that are too much to hold. Too much to hold all at once.