Nothing More
I'd been told I would only get hurt in the end. I'm not an idiot - I'd seen it coming, too.
When it was too late, when it was already over, I asked you what we were, and you just raised your eyebrows and looked at me funny. Then you shook back your head and laughed, and said that we were nothing. That we had never been more and would never grow to be more than something that never happened. Barely, almost, but in the end it just didn't.
I don't know if you said it out of spite or pain, but nothing does not begin to describe what we were. And I'm asking you now, if that’s the case, why did I feel a flutter in my chest when you took my hand for the first time, when you gently rubbed your thumb across my palm? Why did you look at me like that then, with light in your eyes? If that's the case, I am asking you now to take me back to the place where our nothing started.
Take me back to the little restaurant that overlooked the sea, where we cracked bad jokes and ate grossly overpriced food, where our laughter turned people's heads. Take me back to the cities we roamed, where streetlights washed out our features and we got drunk on cheap wine. Take me back to meaningless conversations and serious talks, to risky texts sent at midnight that made my heart beat against my ribcage like the wings of a trapped bird. All the sleepless nights and the lovedrunk hours between darkness and sunrise, the phone calls and little gestures. The "text me when you get home"'s and the "stay safe"'s. Take me back to all these little nothings that used to mean everything.
And then tell me we were nothing once more, and mean it. And I won't ask you again.
In the end we were nothing more than the ghost of a story whispered about the smoldering remains of a bonfire, a soft song carried by the breeze. A footprint left behind in wet sand, faded with time and washed away by the tide.
After all these years, the beginning of our tale still sat on the tip of my tongue, and I was ready to spill like an overflowing sink, ready to fix the frayed thread of memory and weave it into something that would outlast us. But the words never came when I called upon them. They got lost in translation, vanished between the lines, and while I was a storyteller powerless without her words, you evolved and changed, the person I'd known slowly turning into some kind of young god.
Invincible and clad in gold, you towered over me, reminding me of the wrong choices I made, of the mistakes that paved my way. But I was not the only one at fault. Even gods bled. Even legends died, when no one was around to speak about them. Despite my better judgement, I kept you alive. Through wishes made upon the stars in the dead of night, through hopeful thoughts I shared with no one, through dreams as vivid as memory. In keeping you alive, I made certain that I would always remain a part of your story. And I made certain that the legend you were would always remain a part of mine.
