on a good day

Sometimes I go days without thinking about you. I am able to live in the moment and get all entangled in the lives of those around me. I take pictures, laugh really hard, study, dream, and dance in the car.

Then, just as if no time had passed, you come back in. It’s usually something small, a little text, a comment on social media -- a problem of the twenty-first century some would say. And just like that, I am stuck, staring at those couple of words, and I go back. Back to when it was you and me. When we made promises never expecting to break them. When you had my heart and my secrets.

I tell myself that we were too young to understand how good we had it. Those feelings, the flash of young love, it was too much for me to process, too much for smart people like us to trust. We got in our own way, sabotaged it, made excuses, and in the end let it go. It was the one thing I wanted and it -- you and I -- crumbled before my eyes. I failed. And then, in my truest fashion, I pretended. Pretended it wasn’t worth it, pretended you would go on loving me and that one day we’d come back to each other.

You told me once we may have shot in the future. And I clung to that. When I close my eyes, I see it on my computer screen, sitting there like all I had to do was click my heels three times and you’d be here ready for me, in the same way I am here ready for you.

Stupid us. We tried to be friends. We thought we could be that success story, the two people whose names were always next to each other;  we’d prove that we were mature enough to ebb in and out of each other’s lives and make it.

We’ve been at this for about eight years now.

Somedays I get dressed up for someone who isn’t you. I think about kissing someone who isn’t you. I dream of a future far away from you. Those are the good days.