on not knowing you

I knew you better before I knew you. I keep this statement in my mind cycling on repeat as I drive away, further and farther from you than I ever was when we were far away. It is a hard concept to talk about but we try anyway, keeping people close, the connection of words and projections and ideas on who we might be together. It’s a future all soaked in ether. We are not real. You get up and make me another drink and we keep on talking around the other girls and I like the way you speak on girls, not women. I’m the only woman. I can see that now. I’m surprised by the way you peel oranges and break ice. I’m surprised by how soft your skin is. I think about hot summer nights with you states away and sleeping next to my bruised and broken up heart. Telling you above everyone else about how much it bleeds. And now here we are, strangers because we have bodies, strangers because we have voices, strangers because it is strange to be us. 

I am not entirely sure who people are anymore. I get reduced to collarbones in the bedroom. And this isn’t anyones fault. Not August or September, and certainly not October. I’m not disillusioned. I know you all worry on that while my heart beats and my needs need. I’m collecting right now, these breaths and bends – little facts about sound traveling and the touch of the finished poplar sink in your bathroom that makes you miss your old lover. I wonder if you look up and see me standing in doorways and wish I were her. I don’t blame you. I sometimes wish you were him. We’re all just bumping into one another and trying to keep our wants straight. What a mess. We are all such a fucking mess.