I could have cried.
A check for one hundred dollars arrived in my mailbox. I was living in Chicago at the time. The check was from my friend Andy in New York. I had no money, but he wanted me to be able to go home for my brother's high school graduation. I don't think he realized I was also going home to see you.
For five months before that moment, I was mostly dead. I spidered in my room in Chicago, barely leaving the bed, spending Saturdays alone in tears, while my roommates quietly encouraged me to explore the walls beyond my misery. As dramatic as it sounds, that is how it was. I had lost my best friend. Yes, you were only a phone call away, but I had lost you.
At some point, I thought you were coming back. I thought this because you called me in the night, upset, about something unsettling that happened while trapped on a spiritual retreat. I comforted you, and shared visions with you. I was certain that this was the beginning of our fresh start.
You told me I was your best friend, and that you trusted me more than most. You told me I was talented, and glorious, and that what we had shared was sacred.
I guess I expected too much, because after opening my heart completely, letting the prince back into the castle we had built, serving him a grand banquet, delivering him the gold and rubies of my personal treasure chest to make up for my own misgivings in the past and then some, he squandered, ate, stole and left.
And then he left again. and again. and again.
All the subjects of our kingdom seem to take your side. You must have told a harrowing tale of me to them. But all I know is the story of love.
You left a final time this November, after I expressed passionately to you that I could not and would not walk away from everything we had built, from everything that you made me believe in, from everything that was sacred.
That was the stake that closed the coffin, your own words to me at midnight, November 30.
I don't know why I was shocked. I'd seen you do it countless times to other said princesses and companions. And I also knew I would not be the last. But shocked or not, the pain stabbed me in the chest like a million swords hitting my last beating vein.
And the pain persists, through smiles, through good grades, and better times.
I sometimes wonder if any of those other princesses are going to come out of the woods and tell you to stop, their blood now dried on your hands after years have passed.
Or is your reign of terror going to continue indefinitely?
I know of your heart. I've seen it, felt it, kissed it and nourished it. I just wonder where it is now.
I wonder where it is now as I sit in a bookstore and watch you walk by me without a word. As if
I were a ghost sitting near you, and not a long lost, God given friend. Another human. Anything at all.
I'm not brave either. I don't say your name. I don't even cry. I just sit, and turn my head back towards my work. And pretend, convince, believe, it wasn't you at all.
And maybe it wasn't at all. Or maybe it's just easier that way.
"The kingdom is destabilized, the watchtower unmanned
The bedroom lies abandoned and the future is unplanned
But we've got the past to remind us of love chivalrous and grand
And hey i'm sorry 'bout so much baby but i know you'll understand."- Mirah, we're both so sorry
