"If he leaves..."
he faltered,
again, he says..."If he leaves,"
"I do like you
very much...
"Any man would...I think..."
faltering more, he is,
fumbling for the right words.
But I was listening. He was in earnest.
Though I was surprised. I was always surprised by any male attention
back then.
But, at the time, I was also devoted
to a boyfriend who may not have been
so devoted to me.
"I am interested in you...
Your smile is like the sun to me."
And then he smiled back at me. Actually, more like
into me. I felt his warmth, I was glowing.
Eventually the boyfriend moved on.
The three of us scattered, disconnected.
Plodded on through our lives, with no paths crossing.
Only by remote chance were the two of us again
reintroduced. Funny how things were
tentative this time.
Years, fractured memories, making us strangers
but still somehow connected.
Lust was no longer in the equation
we were, after all,
"just friends."
He had an avocation. I was in love.
A kind of disconnect, again, or perhaps
not quite enough connection.
Why aren't women and men friends?
I thought we could have been.
Instead, we talked lazily, skimming the surface
with pleasantries. Eventually, we drifted apart again.
We had our own lives. His the coast. Mine, in the city 70 miles away.
I didn't know his world had turned upside down.
He had committed himself to his secrets.
He seemed to me, too full of life,
to take his own.
Now
I hear his loneliness in the ocean waves
as they crash against the shore.
He had to have heard them often.
They are speaking to me now.
They say:
We could have been good friends.
I look back as the waves erase my footprints.
We should have been.
Copyright August 16 2012 All Rights Reserved By This Author
Melissa a Howells //// Meloo straight from her Tilt-a-World
