I don’t remember when we said goodbye, or if we ever did. The last memory I have is in that apartment, the one above the coffee place and the strange used everything store that never seemed to be open. Sometimes we would stand out on the fire escape, the rickety kind that you see in movies, in New York, in the Seventies, and you would share a cigarette with me. You didn’t smoke and I still did, but some nights you would pretend to, holding your hand out for a drag, taking it gently, with intent, as if it were something to seduce. We didn’t go out there that afternoon, we never seemed to when the sun was still visible. I sat cross-legged on your floor, touching stacks of books, picking one after the other up to read the back, anything to hide my nervous, shaking hands.
I told you I’d met someone. I guess I had by then. Funny to think on it now because even at the start I was plagued with doubts. Even at the start I still was pulled towards you. My words hurt you, I could see it on your face, the blush rising as if I’d slapped you, and maybe I had. I seemed to keep hurting you on purpose, though I was never quite sure why. Looking back though I think I was afraid of what you meant to me, what you could have meant, and what you defined. I was too afraid to love you, yet I was too caught up to let you go.
Was it you that finally let go? Maybe that’s how it happened. And hey, I can’t really blame you. You deserved so much better than I ever gave you.
And now you reach across the ether, the weird connections that we pretend is closeness through word counts and likes and re-purposed thoughts of everyone else but us. I see you there, the way your eyes look the same as they did then, the way your crooked smile still makes my insides tremble. Years gone by and still I feel so conflicted at the thought of you.
Days go by since you threw some kind of cord of what exactly? Were you testing the waters? Was it a mistake? A late night miscalculation, momentarily thinking there was once this girl, but now, if I say something back, will you pretend you never tried to make contact? Would it all be just an act of futility to even say hello? Would you respond? Would it be the same? If it wasn’t, would it hurt in the same way I once hurt you? Is there another girl with you now, in your arms, in your bed, in every song you listen to, in every cigarette you pretend to smoke, in every space you once kept open for me?
What would you do if I told you I still think of you all the time? If I said that I still listen to all the songs we shared together, and that I still have all the mixes we made? If I said that sometimes I close my eyes and pretend that my hands are yours, and that these little midnight deaths were you inside of me? What would you do if I said I never really got over you at all, even though I was the one that did the leaving? It was me, wasn’t it, that said the final unspoken goodbye?
The Death of You and Me :: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
“Let’s run away together you and me,
forever we’d be free,
free to spend our whole lives running,
from people who would be,
the death of you and me.”
at the starlite diner 