The Reminder

I meant to tell you who you were. And who you would always be in the back of my mind. A mirage constantly flooding my present with ideas of way back then and asking me to smile the way I did, even in my raw, adolescent cognizance of morality.

I meant to tell you what you meant to me. What you did that made you remarkable and unsurpassed in compassion. What you did to change how I woke up and went to bed each coming night.

I meant to tell you when you broke my heart. When it was dark outside and the porch light was the only thing reminding me of the dying summers of our 20s. When I knew you would devastate me from one swig of that.

I meant to tell you where to take me. With you. So we could be unobstructed, uninterrupted, uncorrupted. So we could rid ourselves of the routine demise of our own happiness, the parasite that finds its way into our bodies just because.

I meant to tell you all the reasons why I loved you. All the reasons why you were the difference between an unfortunate survival and a better life ahead. All the reasons I should have never left you on the platform. Why it was wrong and maybe the worst decision I have made in this life.

I meant to tell you why you were exquisite and otherworldly. Why you were the seraph who stole everything detrimental and carried it off to far away places, never to be seen again. Why you wanted nothing more in the world to touch my face and tell me that you loved me all the more for it's burgeoning fractures and evidence of tragedy.

I meant to tell you how you changed my life and caused a severe, thrashing pain in the left side of my chest. How every day together I spent thinking of the ways you were a better person than I.

And every night, I dreamt of when we would be robbed of that time. But I never opened my mouth. And so it was the silent dagger that threaded us both. All these things, I meant to tell you. But the cat got my tongue. And now, what's done is done.