Letter, From a Girl Quite Gone

It’s taken my sister a week to paint that Tee. 

For a week now, I’ve watched her brushes at work, our room a renegade rally of fabric bottles and palates.

Every now, I catch a new band logo appearing across the length of the baggy black, half an inch a time.

I think I’ve even memorized a couple of names – August Burns Red, Bring Me the Horizon.

And it’s still a month to her boy’s ‘Happy Birthday!’.

There’s just no telling, you know?  The utter irrelevance of things that’ll, sudden as a star shower,

cut through your limbo and gut your sick indulgence.

I doubt I’ll ever really know, what it was about watching a sixteen year old put all her heart into her best mate’s birthday preparation, that got my insides in a tangle.

Perhaps it reminded me of the night I’d spent in vanilla stains, trying to bake the least disastrous cake for you. You’d let slip something about craft papers, it’d taken me all of my cake-focus to stop myself from guessing your surprise out loud. Or maybe it was all the hours of snack-stash listing that came back to poke me in the throat bulge.
I couldn't possibly tell which, but I know it isn't just one shot of a misfired  memory.
Not really.  

It’s always a lame guess, just what sets it off. But I think it was the unsullied innocence of the scene. Of capless paint bottles and a hunched up girl, anxious to dream up the best gift she can, enchanted that she has a reason to. 

Uncomplicated, woundless love. 

The floating ends of a half-remembered dream, for me.

It broke a few veins, I guess, realizing that I’ve come crazy far from being that crazy girl.

(What? You need a little crazy to be that beautifully in love. And not spook out over it. See?)

But it’s a good kind of crazy, that. Hell, perhaps even the best kind.

And I’ve run miles to lose track its faintest smell.  Full credit there. Blah.

But cutting myself some slack, do what it takes to come out on the other side, right?

Even if you come out a different person.

At least you’re still there. Hanging in somewhere.

Being something.

Oh that I definitely am. Something.

I’ll not bet you remember, but

so were we.

We were, we were something.

Something  good. Rare, even.

Something some light-years away from this loop of vagueness and half-truths here.

Not free from your average squabbles and strains of a working relationship, may be, but something honest, something unapologetically real. 

How many times do we get to say that?

(I’m not counting. I don’t need to.)

Well, what do you know, Que Sera Sera.

Sometimes I wonder if it could have been that hard, coming as who you are, each to each.

No lisping, pretensions, no careful omissions.

Because I remember ice creams. And laughter. And  words, sincere beyond their years.

Because I remember feeling lucky.  Safe.

Freefallingly in love. And not even spooked over it. (Imagine the odds of that one!)

Coming back to my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday gift,

believe it or not, it has left me with more than this angsty emotional rant.

I suppose clarity IS that. Simple and unavoidable.

What was, was.  (And it was beautiful. For me, it was.
Just why would I take that back?)

And then again, what isn’t, equally isn’t.

You can’t defend an absence by a presence paralyzed in memory.

You shouldn’t have to.

May be I’ll always remember our  icing sugar, handmade paper days, you know?
(And not spook out over it.)

And that’s exactly why I’ll not be around to double-analyze these love-like whimsies
that keep me drifting  in your test tube of piantlessness.

Not anymore.

I've known too many seasons of capless paint love to trade myself for this pale water colour mess.

I don’t know if that should make me sad or happy.

(A bit of both, may be?)

So for what it's worth, if
it's worth something at all,
know that I've loved you.  Long and real.

No half-truths, no omissions.

I’ve loved you when you loved me back and I’ve loved you when you didn’t/quite know.

But.

It’s taken my sister a WEEK to paint that Tee.

And the few stray blobs of love I got on my skirt in the process, tell me that it’s my time to
stop.