We’re ignorant to claim the memories will not fade. In reality, all I’ll eventually have are old pictures of you that I flip through and sigh over. Like an old woman holding a faded Polaroid of a fling with an army man who’s in another country, old and wrinkled too, with his own family and his own life and if she’s lucky enough, hidden in a dusty box somewhere, a picture of her as well, bent and yellowed. In some, there would be wild landscapes behind her as she laughed to the sky, in nothing but her underwear and a ring that only fit her wedding finger. Others would be sad, with unsure smiles at dinner parties and a distant reflection in her eyes.
The best collection of their fleeting love remained locked up in pages of journals that were scrambled and fervent and satisfied by the comfort harbored within confusion and instability. Any reader, aside from the author, would scoff at the dramatic inflections and unbridled emotions entwined and dismiss every ounce of sincere love and admiration proclaimed.
Though thought of seldom, and without reason, they both held secret’s belonging to the other that were unfathomably clandestine, seemingly making it an offense to linger in contemplation about them for too long for fear the other would feel it from wherever they were and sense they had betrayed their unspoken pact of trust. Being someone’s safe box, a tiny steel compartment nestled amongst thousands of personal fortunes of the living and deceased, instills a worth in one’s self that feels as valuable as its contents, however more so obscure. Unless, of course, in another box, along a different row, in another aisle and labeled with your initials, resting at the top, is this admission. If this is the case, it is likely both boxes share one identical content:

that’s for them to know.

I gave you an obscure piece of information regarding the stability of my mental health in relation to being able to love while blindfolded, hands tied behind back, and with an effervescent vestige. I slipped it in the breast pocket of your shirt in hopes you’d feel it burning through and send your best regards to my hopeless disposition and, if the timing was right, a confession of your inability to exist contently in the absence of my presence. For months you manage to tread along in your routine, never fingering your shirt for a pen to sign your name, a piece of gum to maintain and remind others of your flawless pedigree, or to examine, out of pure curiosity, the stitch that created the shape of the pocket on your muscular chest.

Aside from occasionally pacing in the dark of my living room, humming to a crackling broadcast of Dennis Coffee on the jazz station, I manage to effortlessly find events to attend and new people to distract in order to blanket the thoughts of what could be happening between the two of us. I’m not one to linger in watery hopes, ones that can slip beneath door frames and stain the floor boards. I’m rather attracted to the blinding shimmers of hope that leave sun spots on my skin and blurry circlets in my vision. The warm hope, that is heavy like fog and sticks to the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck, and on the tips of my eyelashes always hovering in front of me like a carrot to a donkey, unintentionally and thoughtlessly leading me to an undisclosed location that was never ensured to foster the oasis of fidelity I’ve conceptualized.

Yet, here I remain, lost in a tundra of sanguine words that I pray will melt the cold beneath my feet and turn all the muddy doubt of love’s possibilities in to firm, lush fields of authenticity. If you happen to be idling about in your usual passages and you find yourself among an abnormally placed field of infatuation, one that you’ve seen only in your own imagination, and in the distance a solitary woman with hope dripping from her split ends like a broken faucet approaches you without caution, do your best to pretend you meant to find her. Else, let the journey remain as a delusion of some virulent fever and never speak of it’s contingency.