33. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head

It seems like the memories of my most enjoyable moments from my life fade the quickest. Their brightness dimmer with every recall.  Each pang is quieter until I cannot even remember the expression on your face. All that remains is a fading ember in my chest and a slow, sad, smile. These are happy tears for times we can never have again.

Yet, that seared scar never fades. I can still feel your spit as those words shock and rob me of my future plans. They pressed a permanent imprint into my brain. That energy has not subdued over the years. The photos of us look like our younger siblings.

I was grabbing at a popped bubble of smoke.

I’ve written wishes for witches and prayers for nuns. Cheek resting on cold tiles, or curled, tangled in white sheets with nothing to look at but pure blue sky, wondering whether you’re looking at that same sky right now.

I’ve left the back door of my mind open on a spring morning, so you could wander around and leave when you’re ready. Those sleepy barefoot Sundays; marking the end with routine preparation, readying ourselves for the new.

I’ve skimmed all the pebbles we collected, sung out loud on stage and ridden my bike hard down steep hills to let you go. Travelled to far away places, terrified by crazy taxi drivers, sick with strange water and paid over the odds for things I didn’t need, to try to overflow new memories in. I tied a tiny bag of your possessions to a crossroads in a place I’d never been to before. I feel grateful to ever have known you. I’ve been blessed by someone dedicated to a cause I care not for, to cleanse my spirit of you. I thanked you. I asked you to leave. I’ve forgiven you; permission to go granted. I’ve slammed the door in your face every time you tried to get in. But you keep coming back. You don’t belong here. It’s limbo. A ghost from my past who won’t let me live in my present.

A woman with jingling wrists, smelling of woodsmoke, grabbed my hand in the street and said, “he’s sorry he hurt you”. My yoga teacher said our souls had unfinished business from other lives and we would meet again in the next. I read that it was all down to mercury in retrograde. Time heals. Have you not had enough of mine?

So, I have no choice but to give in. I have nothing left to lose. I have to find a way to live with you, as I wait without you. I grow older, while you will always be 27. You wont let go of my hand; the ache from my phantom limb.