No Closure

Just an imagine letter or conversation to a past loved. It's still unclear where I want it to go but it's a first draft, no editing. I plan to add and adjust to this ode of sorts moving forward.

***

What happened? Really. One minute we're mad in love with each other and the next thing I know 23 years have come and gone without you. Does the lack of closure bother you at all?

I've been reduced to intermittent abstract thoughts of you while wondering, perhaps even hoping, if you did the same.

Something tells me you did and still do.

Yet. Yet here we are. Married to other people with children. I don't doubt happiness is found. Fulfillment is another thing I reckon.

Why get into that? What's the point?

If it were meant to be, then somehow we would have found a way to fall into our respective arms; even with my bad shoulder. Fate, I presume, maintains its presence.

I don't expect anything to be discovered and been resolved to accept the fact there will be no closure to whatever the fuck it was we had.

All I know is my heart never ached like it did during the years I courted you. Never has so much personal energy been expunged into a girl for me. What makes it all the more absurd is it amounted to precious little. We exchanged, what, one kiss on the lips and four slow dances at each other's proms and two parties?

Those pitiful actions are completely disproportionate to how much I loved you.

Or was it love? I don't know.

Our relationship was one big fucking non-sequitur.

Remember that day in the alley at school?

Was it immaturity? Did I misread any signals? Was it already decided for you back then and I failed to compute or even accept it?

Me? How am I? I just went on to College and semi-conformed to social norms. I've been waging my own private war ever since. Life, she's a can of distortion.

Oh. I just found out, because it's a small town, you attended the same university. Imagine that. I saw, met and bumped into many people in four years (about 1400 days) of "education" but you weren't one of them.

Oddly, the impact you had on my soul suggests we spent every single day together.

Ghostly romance I would call it.

Please don't take my tone wrong. I'm just absolutely disoriented about it all as I cross the Rubicon into my 40s.

I've had three impassioned poems written for me by three different ladies. Plato was no fan of the "imitative tribe" as he called poets, but it proved my existence sufficiently. Imagine if I slept with any of them! Even more strange, I never physically met one of the three.

I was lucky to be in three meaningful relationships and still miss some of the girls that have passed through my arms. There was a cool, hipster chapter in my life. Of course, the amorous escapades culminated into my lovely, charismatic and brilliant wife who has put up with my antics. Nonetheless, I never got used to such a sedentary life. My daughter is rather prococious. I hope I can help her along her own path.

I spent the first 30 years of my life mocking and facing it with satirical indifference, it in turn giggled as it delivered a dash of devilish sinking knuckle balls my way.

I saved. I fucked. I partied. I played sports. I met rock stars. Got published. Started a business. Spent time and chatted with characters meant for Lou Reed and Tom Waits. Opportunities were missed and money lost in the market. Debts swelled. Money to be made once more.

You never strayed too far away. I accepted it wasn't to be. I think.

Just another night on the town as I stand here playing the saxophone on the corner of De Blois and Mallard streets wearing a Dodgers cap.

You know.

I saw you once. I know you saw me see you. I saw your face. That look. It suggested to me you haven't forgotten. Emotions, I want to believe, continue to stir.

Or maybe I'm mistaken and being a tad narcissistic. What with the poetry going to my head.

I can't tell! Time has dulled blurred my Bat-pragmatic senses. It's not like we gave each other a chance.

Either way, I couldn't bring myself to talk to you. All that "meet our spouses" crap. Not for me, man. Hey, just thought of something. I threw away the key chain you got me in junior high. I was an impulsive feller.

Truth is, if you have to know Emily, I still cling to that moment when I saw you at my surprise  sixteenth party.

An instant beginning and ending of a possible promise descending into a deep trench of what ifs.

I have no clue what's in the cards or if any of this has any rational explanation waiting.

I just know I don't know.