Shadow

Sitting in the warm glow of my bathroom, I leaned gently on the toilet seat so as not to disturb it, you lounged comfortably on the bathtub rim. It was weeks before I was leaving. You were getting antsy, I was nervous about your anticipation. One of the lightbulbs in the bathroom had burned out, and I was dismayed at how dusty the holder for the extra toilet paper rolls had become. I suppose it didn’t matter since you’d been over so many times. My mom was probably downstairs cooking dinner, or asleep in her room.

My eyes were wide and tearful, yours were relaxed. Although you still tripped over your sentences as you told me what you were thinking. I guess at that point neither of us was feeling very good with words. 

You talked about breaking up with me as if it were no big deal; the sex was close enough that you could imagine a distance from it, you wanted to. I felt tears slip down my face and I was embarrassed at how singularly I wished for you. You stared into me as if you knew how tightly I held onto you. I pictured love letters and let myself be naked.

We finally settled on an agreement, although I think I knew then how unsatisfied I felt. I prayed you would know better than to take my words seriously. I couldn’t imagine being in the world that had come before we were us, two people, together.

The funny thing is that it took me longer to get comfortable calling you my boyfriend than it did to call you my ex. I’ve seen you twice since then, and each time I’ve felt more confident than I ever did while we were dating.

But waking up and having you next to me, I can only feel annoyed. I wish you hadn’t stayed the night, wish the sex had felt more natural, wish my roommates never got to learn what you look like. I can tell from your eyes that you love me, and yet I feel only upset with myself for letting you tap into that vulnerability. I want to feel more for you, and in the moments that I do I feel terrible. I don’t miss you all the time. But sometimes I do, and it takes everything I have not to crumple and admit that this is what I was always afraid of. It took me six months to break up with you because I knew how hard it would be to keep knowing you. I don’t want you out of my life. I just wish that we had a more natural existence together. I wonder what kept me distracted for so long—was it because I loved you so blindly?

Now you’re the person I always dreamed of while we were together, and I can’t bring myself to want it.

Sometimes I wish we could go back in time, slip under the covers, watch walking dead, laugh about Christmas trees. I want to have the knowledge that you’d follow me around the world if I asked. But the world is different today. And I know that if I asked you to follow me now, the only thing you’d do is trail me like a nervous shadow, wondering if at any moment the sun might go behind the clouds and force you to disappear.