It’s hard for me to write about you. To remember the way you looked at me; to remember the words you wrote to me. To remember how it was all of these that will no longer exist. To remember how it’s all of these that you no longer want.

It’s hard for me to find the right combination of words to describe you. To describe me, when I was with you. My English teacher told me it’s because I have to wait for the blood to dry before the ink will take.

Otherwise it’s messy, emotional. Unfocused. Like us, that night.

Like me: after you.

But messy makes me feel alive.

But messy reminds me of my childhood: yellow, sunny, with shades of black I remember but don’t understand.

But messy makes me feel at home: because the only love you can ever understand is the one you were always taught.

I want to say that I don’t know what the point of this is. I want to say that I don’t know why I keep forcing the words. Each time I recall your face it reopens the wound. Each time I say your name it stabs through the entirety of my being. But the point isn’t masochism. The point isn’t the pain. Isn’t the you that left. The point was the minute of happiness; the you that stayed.

I just liked you. The way you saw me. The way you felt me. The way these memories make me relive you just enough to be worth the sadness that follows. The way you were sweet enough to overpower the bitterness in the back of my throat. The way I can’t stop buying into my third truth: that a relationship can only be monumental in it’s tragedy. Grand in it’s pain.

I want to say this is why I choose men like you. To do you for the story. To have you for the pages. The truth is I’m too afraid to have  you for more than the story. To have you past the pages. The truth is I don’t know why I choose men like you.

Maybe it’s because of the confidence; the power. Maybe it’s because the way you show me how I could bend; how I am with the possibility of breaking. Maybe it’s because with everyone else it’s my choice, but with you it’s yours.

I tell everyone it was in Central Park underneath the magnolias where I became infatuated. I wore my black heels and favorite wool coat. It was New York in May, and too hot for wool. You called magnolias by their name, and me by mine. We spent an hour walking. I can’t remember the trails we followed, or the streets we went. Just the way my hands were through the bend of your elbow; the tangible envy in the faces we passed. Us: reflected in everyone else. The way we belonged.

The reality was that it was at baggage claim–five seconds before you saw me when I became infatuated. You were facing the wrong gate. I came up behind you. I only ever take hands at first meeting, but hugged you because I needed to know the feeling.

This is the moment of you my mind refuses to forget: the slideshow of your profile, turning to meet me. The way the full-frontal of your face registered with a staggering blow instead of subtle charm. The way you were astonishing; the thought that I’ve never had anything like you. Alabaster, with obsidian features. It was in the contrarian of your appearance that should’ve warned me to the danger of you. It was in the solidity of your appearance that should’ve told me I could never have you.

This is the you that my pride obsesses to remember: the you with eyes that met mine with unsteadiness instead of ease. The you with nervous hands at the small of my back.

This is the you that my heart could never give up: the you with anxiousness of not having what you couldn’t see was already yours.

In the town car I asked if you were part Greek. You asked me how I knew. I laughed and told you it was in the power of your jawline, the strength of your nose. The square of your shoulders, mirrored in your hairline. The shape of your lips that I had still not felt.

I didn’t tell you it was because Grecians are known for their sculpture, and you were carved from marble. I didn’t tell you it was because you were hardened in the way rock was once sediment; how you flinched, when I only offered fingertips. I didn’t tell you it was because your eyes were the first I met that colored black, but begged me to swim to find the hue in ocean blues.

I didn’t tell you it was because I could feel the deception you were born from, but wanted to spend the entirety of your life correcting. I didn’t tell you because I wanted the tragedy. The pain: the story.

I didn’t tell you, because your face wasn’t the only thing that made me not trust you.

You smiled. “You’re intelligent, aren’t you?”

I looked at you. “Not really.”

You rebutted.

Some people can smell wine and pinpoint the body, the year, the tannins. Some people can smell wine and tell you the taste. I touched you and found the memories. The needs, the wants. The half-truths on your tongue. The thoughts of me–but not. Just the idea of me. The concept. To you I was some shitty expressionist painting nobody gets but you had to have to pretend you understood. To you, I didn’t know the medium I existed in–just what I needed to do.

I say that people fuck like they are. But it’s in their hands that people show you where they’ve been before you. In their lips that tell you where they’ll be after you. Everything people do is a dictionary of everything they are, everything they want to be. Everything they can’t stand being.

People are only capable of telling you who they think they are; who they want to be. The truth is who they really are is in what they do. The truth is that actions speak louder than words: because lying is a sin committed by the mouth, but refuted by the body. The show was in the words you made with your lips; the truth was in the movements you made underneath your skin. The truth was in the reserved eagerness of your hands. The starvation of your tongue.

So it’s funny: those who say they love books and hate people. How they want to live in a world of words, but already do.

They’ve never met the Dostoevsky in your hands; the Kerouac in the continuation of you, into me–and the Kafka, spelled out in the mapping of your veins, teaching me the metamorphosis of mine.

I wanted you, from cover to cover: to turn the pages of silk in your skin, to learn the characters of dissonance in your mind. To figure out the plot of our idiotic rendezvous. To redraft the story arc created by my body, held against yours. To retell the intro of your hands. The slow, continuous action of your mouth: alluding to mine.

I was in high school again–and all I wanted to do was to say fuck the thesis. To screw the essay. I was sixteen when I called myself a bibliophile. Now I was twenty-one, stroking the binding of you, understanding the meaning.

You were my existentialism; my climax–my stranger, my constant point of reference. You were my thesaurus–the place I allowed myself lost to find new words. You were the book I put down, for fear of finishing.

It may have been your diction that taught me your love of law, your want to make a difference–but it was your lips, your fingers, that showed me your hunger of life. Your need to be alive. It was your words that said you’d see me again; but the  desperation of your arms that taught me I would never.

The pain of these are the nights after: where the only remnants are my memories, your scent, and sometimes a number. The pain of these is the finality.

The beauty of these is the me that existed only for you. The beauty of these is how you were mine in a way that I could never have. The beauty of these is in the story; written with ink, warped onto bleeding pages.

The beauty of it is that I wanted this. The singular, finite moment in time you were you, and I was I: suspended from our separate realities.

The story is that you spoke in whimsy, but begged for solace. The story is that you are perfect to me–because you couldn’t not be. The story is that there were no dragons, no beasts. Because this was our fairytale, and we were already the tragedy. Because you are part Grecian in blood, and I: in love. Because the failure was already built into our beings; carried out by our physicality.

My ending is that I miss you, and it has nothing to do with you.

My truth is that I miss me, and it has everything to do with you–the me that became the girl, who enraptured a boy too good. The girl with the borrowed taste of twenty-dollar Malbec on her tongue and 2001 Cabernet on her bill.

This is where I say the magic was in the fantasy, in the finality, in the tragedy. But I’ve never been a good liar. So we are lucky, then: that your dishonesty makes up for all that I’ve ever lacked.

The magic was in us, in proximity. It was in the streets of New York; under the lights of Time Square. It was in the town car, your fingers intertwining mine; the interlude to our bodies, the foreshadowing of skin. It was in the darkness of broadway, the heaviness of your lips finally meeting me. It was in my fingertips against your tastebuds; my legs around your waist. It was in the morning light; the second crescendo of our physicality. It was in the lack of the smell of you, mixed with mine.

The story is that we refused the ending. The story is that we couldn’t turn the page, because we knew moments like these can’t have happier endings. Because we are not born of enough fighter; not born of enough contrarian. The story is that we were not greedy enough to be in love; just jaded enough to have love. To hold it before the return flight. Before the morning sun. To return it before it became the childhood we both knew.

So this is where I thank you: for not letting me feel the end. For not allowing yourself to be finished.

I know that the only you I will ever have left is the you I choose to remember. I know that love is showing people what they need; not giving them what they want. I know we are perpendicular; that we met by choice, not chance.

I know that the more of you I write down, the more of you I can keep. I know that I beg you to be different, but you’re just the same. I know that you were never meant to stay. I know that I could love you, from memory alone.

I know that I know nothing.