I Don’t Want To Remember You Anymore

You crawled into me and took a seat. You just fit so well. I remember falling into the nook of your shoulder for the first time and you called me your puzzle piece and that fit well too. We just snapped together like some corner piece of a portrait that helps make the rest of the picture start to make sense. All of the nervousness and the failed first date and everything in between seemed silly when I realized that we would just work and I didn’t have to force that.

I can still feel the way your breath would hit just before you leaned into kiss me. Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see the spot that you kissed me on my forehead for the first time and I feel it. I don’t remember how I felt in that moment or recall the gesture fondly, I feel it. I know what it felt like that first night in your bed when you looked me in the eye as if we had the whole world ahead of us. I remember laying with your arms wrapped around my knees, sitting at my feet, and pouring out why your parents’ marriage didn’t work and why your prior relationships didn’t work and why you were scared but you weren’t too scared to trust me with that and so I began to trust you.

I remember pulling at your beard when I wanted a kiss and how it would make you smirk. For future reference in your new endeavors, always go for that smirk. It’ll make them swoon. When we sat on the couch and got stoned and watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you knew all the right lines to whisper in my ear (let me just show you this one thing.) For future reference, the cheesiness coincided perfectly with the moment. You really knew what you were doing there. Oh, and for future reference, I could always tell when you were trying hard, like on our first date at the restaurant you loved and you had to comment to the waitress on the slightest changes in the place and try and recall stories like old friends when I’m pretty sure she had no idea who you were. It’s okay, I’m sure you were a regular there, even if she didn’t remember what you ordered last time you went.

For future reference, though, maybe don’t make your future endeavors feel like they’re your everything when you’re planning on upping and moving across the country. Don’t introduce them to every single one of your friends until their head spins with names if it doesn’t matter whether they remember you or not, because you’re leaving. Don’t make them meet your dad three days before you leave if you “just don’t want to do long distance.” Because I know you had said with your words that eventually you would have to go, but your actions said otherwise. You pried me open when I wanted to remain shut, and just as I stood there, finally exposed, you left.

You wanted me to trust you and I did. You wanted us to fit and we did. But you didn’t want us to last, you wanted to pretend. I don’t want to remember you anymore. I don’t want to be able to give you a play by play of advice for your future endeavors. I don’t want to remember the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because whether I like it or not, I’m still standing here, exposed. I don’t just remember, I long for. And as I lay in bed with lovers that are here and now and want to give me what I wanted with you I don’t want to remember that I want you more. I don’t want to feel that kiss on my forehead. I just want you wiped. You wanted to leave so I let you go. But, for future reference, I only let you go because I didn’t have the choice.