A Month Ago

A month ago, you told me you were happy. I know I am not making this up. You were sitting in my bed. You were wearing that shirt I hated so much, the one with that actress that I could never remember the name of on it. God, that shirt was hideous. But you told me, you looked me in the eye and said that you were happy.

A month ago things were fine. We still talked.We still laid in bed together wishing our youth away, wishing we were older or that we were somewhere else. We still loved each other. But that night. Something did feel different. When you said- I couldn't and still can't quite put my finger on what it was about the way you said,

"I am happy"

"I do love you"

I am.

I do.

I believed you. Where are you now?

Floating by me in shopping malls. Hair swirling near your shoulders - who would have ever thought it would get that long again?

Showing up at my apartment, crying to me about how your love for my best friend is unrequited. Telling me of your new venture into sculpture and how you only make ashtrays because that's all you need.

Passing by me on roads we now share separately because you're finally driving again.

How strange it is now. We still say I love you, it's just not to each other.

Somehow, some one new comes along, for both of us.

But a month ago, I loved you. You loved me. It is almost funny the way it just fades. Fades into something else. Into someone else.

Do you now crave his attention the way I crave hers?

It is all so unfathomable. It is as if we are all just part of some theater troupe, traveling the city, putting on our desperate show for everyone to see. Hoping they will enjoy it enough to toss us some change and validate what we do to ourselves, to each other.

But still I wonder, what happened? What fault was there in the intricacies of the inner workings of our intellects that led to our demise?

I have since tried to wonder not where we went wrong, but where we went right. Sifting through the failures to find some grain of goodness that you refuse to believe existed. There was something there but now that something is with him, for me it is with her.

So we will say I love you.

To him.

To her.

Bradford Pears

When I was younger, there was a Bradford Pear Tree that stood outside of my home. These trees are not so suitable for climbing, but against my mother's wishes I climbed it anyway. I could never make it to the very top of those branches. When I was old enough to climb that tree, I was too heavy for the topmost branches. They were too thin and I was too heavy.

I could make it about three quarters up the limbs. I could never reach the top.

Too thin.

Too heavy.

One night, lightning split the tree and it fell. I would never reach the top. The top and the rest of the tree hit the ground and was soon hauled away. Stuffed into the back of some nondescript truck with the other victims of that storm. Branches that 24 hours previously waved and swayed in the wind, whose branches played host to a multitude of children, but no more.

Too thin.

Too heavy.