Breaks in between sentences and let's get all this out in the open
Because it's hard for me to physically pull these words from their hiding places between my ribs
They cling so tightly that sometimes I get so caught up in trying to pull them out, and my words stop cooperating too.
And it's much easier for me to coax them out when they aren't first row seats to the front and center spotlight on your beautiful eyes.
When I met you the nights were longer and I got so much more sleep. I was somewhere in between a thick fog and a sunny day and I think I was more perpetually stuck on a groggy fall morning... To be honest, maybe it would be easier to say I was forever stuck on August 20th, at 7 am. Not because the date means anything, just because that feels like a day that's somewhere between sweltering hot and beautiful cool, but the mornings are ugly and sometimes kinda damp in August, so it fits.
The first time I saw you I thought to myself, "who still wears flannels?" And then immediately decided I still loved it when guys wear flannels. I saw the stubble on your chin and jawline and immediately decided I was, in-fact, jumping on the beard train. Not because when I saw you I wanted to change myself or my desires, but because you awakened desires in me that I had long since given up on. I saw you a few times a week, but gave you a respectful distance since you were always sitting next to a pretty girl who had a personality I can only compare to a butterfly perpetually coming out of her cocoon. The colors always more vivid than they should be, almost unreal in Texas, where colors tend to gravitate towards their "burnt" brothers... You know, the way the grass is never really grass green but more of an olive or even a "burnt sienna", and how the leaves on the trees are more often seen as a "burnt orange" than oak green.
So I chalked you up as unattainable until one day our butterfly flew away and I asked you where she had been. You said you thought I was more of a butterfly scientist and I think I smiled despite it being a kind of serious conversation.
I think, honestly, I already knew you weren't together. But it made more sense in my mind to place you with a pretty girl like her instead of allowing my mind to run rampant.
And so it began. The fog was now farther down towards the horizon than it was before, and I was starting to hear the wind tickle the leaves and I knew something was changing. I started to unshackle myself from what I knew and I think my prison guard kind of started to freak out but I'd been there so long I also think he didn't care too much anymore. Maybe he wanted me to escape too.
So I started grasping for the ladder that would get me out and I was halfway up before I realized I was missing prongs and that it would take me a while before I was completely out.
But I couldn't help but encourage my friends to find things in common with you so you'd come closer and I would be able to strike up conversation. Then one day, after embarrassing myself a few times, you invited me downtown for art and tea and music and I somehow pulled some of those ladder prongs out of my ass because I was fucking OUT of there.
It wasn't that it would have been hard to get out in the first place, I just don't think prison shackles are that flattering on me, especially not on a first date.
So we went out on the first Friday in November, which was November 7th in 2014. We got lost because I wanted to show you something too, and while I spent most of the beginning of the night flushed and embarrassed, we still had a great time. We ended the night listening to Riff Raff in my car for hours and after I went inside I cried myself to sleep because I was scared to open myself up to someone again, but every time I looked at you I felt myself open up regardless.
After that, I had invited you to Jim's for coffee because you tried to leave and I wasn't ready to say goodbye. This became routine, coffee from 11 pm to sometimes 3 in the morning. A little while later, we drank shitty lemonade and water for 6 hours outside a taco cabana, and my nose was runny because I was sick so I tried to hide me wiping it off on my sleeve because that's disgusting. Driving home that day was dangerous but I think the sun being so bright was indicative of the dawn of a new time for me.
So, on a day when everyone wants turkey so bad we fight over them in grocery marts, I downed a whole bottle of wine and made friends with your roommate and played house washing dishes. You asked me for a ride home and before you finished asking I said yes. I stayed at your house until 11 in the morning and I honestly don't remember how I felt afterwards. I was very tired and a little hungover. I went into work in the same clothes as the night before and gushed to the johns for hours.
Somewhere in between turkey day and December 8th, I came over to your house to hang out with you and your friends. Your friends left and you asked me to stay, and we watched school of rock but we didn't really watch it. I pretended to fall asleep because I was scared to kiss you. When I pretended to wake up you tangled your mouth into mine and sucked on my lips and my tongue and I felt so small in your arms. You woke up parts of me that had been asleep and I kissed you back like I had been missing you for years. Because I had. You combed your fingers through my hair until they got caught and when I felt my hair pull away from my scalp a fire awoke in me that I hadn't felt in a long time. We pulled away gasping and you held me in a way I needed to be held. Once again I had to hold back tears because I had no idea what I was doing. In the back of my mind I remembered how men had a great way of tangling themselves between both sets of a woman's lips and never really holding their hands.
We went to first Friday again and you got mad that I wouldn't stroke your hand with my fingers. I threw a temper tantrum like a five year old and I had to explain that I had to relearn how to be affectionate... I relearned quickly.
December 8th, 2014. After a few chamoy shots I wore the freezer jacket that you hated and I buried myself in you when my best friend said you were a real man. I found happiness tangled in the hairs on your chest and I think I felt for the first time, a great love for you. Not crazily- I didn't love you. Not yet. But there was a fondness deep in my chest for you. I slept at your house that night and I woke up skin to skin with you. I woke up as your partner. December 8th, 2014. There were a lot of Facebook likes.
I wrote this not because I feel like anyone really wants to know every detail of how I got where I am. I wrote it because I never want to forget, even if it ever becomes painful to remember. I need something to look back on physically, so I can nod and shed a graceful tear and say, "This was a great beginning to a great love".
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