The Lost Chapter

“Things do not change; we change.” –Henry David Thoreau 1

***2

I missed you out. 3

I’m so sorry. And everything I’ve written about… is a lie. A bloody, fucking lie that was the mental product of too much thinking and insane manipulating. 4

I promise to start all over again, and write you a new chapter away from all the tears and pain.5

And it’s as real as it comes, like nothing else. 6

You were as real as they come.7

You were my waking reality, my lost fantasy, the bridge linking my dreams with my waking moments. As Thoreau said, “Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.”8

That is the truest truth (if there ever is one—as my Prof would love to know) that I have ever heard, and you’re the epitome of its meaning.9

I’m writing this part of my life out because of all the mistaken perceptions I’d made, all the forgotten innuendoes, and all the lost words said. 10

This is as much a sorry, as a story. For you, for me, for everyone, I guess. But most importantly, for you. You. You deserve one all to yourself. 11

I’m sorry.12

***13

Why didn’t I talk about you huh? When I was writing my (supposed) life story a couple months back. 14

I don’t know.15

I guess I still don’t know many things.16

I guess all these don’t really matter—just that I need to state clearly that I’ve made a mistake all this while—that some things do change, and no, it’s not you. It might not be me, either. 17

You haven’t changed, and that is a truly amazing thing. I wonder how I could have been so… completely stupid to even think that you might have. Oh God, no. And everything you’ve said, about everything that’s happened to you… I wish I were there watching you narrating the story of your life.18

But I weren’t. 19

So there. 20

And now it’s too late and… no, it’s not. I picked up the last poem I wrote for you in the last days of the year, and I realized what a fucking big mistake everything was. (No, not you—it’s… me.)21

It’s all just a… supremely idiotic, catatonically spastic, freaking ginormous human error. Oh my God, no. I love you, you adore me, and everything we have… is everything I’d thought we had. (Okay, confused much? Don’t be. This is not your life.) 22

I was right; you weren’t wrong.23

But I became confused, and I made an error in judgement.24

Oh bloody hell, I am so sorry. 25

What about school then? What about everyone else?26

No, for the life of me, I’m not going to stop thinking of you and start hallucinating about another self. He’s not like you—he’ll never be—and no one can ever replace your face in my mind. 27

I saw your face every night in my dreams, because you were the sole requiem of my beautiful past. You represented the world of yesterday, the better times that once were, and the melding of my fantasies with reality. 28

I never thought about what it’d all mean when it all ends one day. (And it will, and it did.) 29

Okay, correction—I did. I thought about it day and night, way before any end was even in sight. And my best friend was begging me to stop, because I was driving her crazy… and she didn’t want to think a thing about it. 30

I didn’t stop though. I just thought, and thought, and thought… but there you were— you were real!31

I knew it; and yet, I didn’t know it.32

You smiled at me, we laughed together; you whispered to me, we talked with each other; you gave me a lift home, and I thought we would be happy forever. 33

We laughed, we talked, we played, we walked… I read your text messages as a sacred scroll Heaven sent, and I believed every word because all the signs that could ever exist were pointing to the moment when the grin broke out across my face when I read your smiles. 34

You saw my smile, and I felt your tears. 35

I made you laugh, but you made me cry. 36

I wrote pages after pages of metaphors and reality for you, but all you gave me was a dream. An empty dream. Oh no, a dream that you’d portended to be void, a dream that you’d told me, from the very beginning, of its inevitable end.37

Okay, I know.38

You’re just like me.39

We were so alike.40

And you liked my shows, and my books, and… everything I did, was just so strange, so funny, and me. I think you knew me in a way that I never knew myself. 41

I mean, I saw myself in a new light from the way you looked at me.42

Everything was so beautiful, and so bright…43

There was a glow radiating from your blissful presence in my life.44

Did I teach you to love life? Or did you love yours even more than I did mine? 45

I don’t know. But we learned so much… precisely because of such different worlds we’d come from. I lived my life in shades of grey, whilst you were always trying to portray the world in the clear black-white divisions you viewed everything to be. 46

This time round, it wasn’t Matt who was the sun, and I was the moon dwelling only in darkness. I could be the sun, which saw everything in pastel shades and golden glow, while there you are, my dark knight, bathing everything with your moonshine.47

I am so sorry, but this is the only way I know how to make sense of things—by writing you out in imagery and form, and making everything seem an ethereal norm. This is the only way I know how to be me.48

After you left.49

There’s actually nothing left.50

***51

But I believed in you.52

Oh, don’t get me wrong—I still do. 53

I don’t know how I do it sometimes, but it seems like… there always comes this point where I stop believing and knowing, and something just happens to pull my faith back towards you again.54

It’s been two years… two years and more, but what we had, was real. What we had lost… was even more so. 55

I may never look you in the eye again, and never hear your voice calling out to me.56

It doesn’t matter anymore.57

I just need to know, to remember, that everything the past year, was a gargantuan mistake. And I didn’t lose you. (No, you were always there.) I lost someone else. 58

And I don’t know what it is about the other one (no, not now; he’s an even more complicated, uh, story than you) but you made me remember something. You made me remember just what it was that I told my best friend about you.59

Yes, you calm me down. I looked at you, and I could feel my heartbeat slowing… pulsating to its natural rhythm, rather than continuing its nervous acceleration at my friends’ insane antics. Yes, you make me laugh. Like no one else, in the darkest moment, I could look at the smile on your face, hear your laughter, and I laughed with you. Yes, I dream of you. That one time, I felt my heartbeat adjust its rhythm to yours in my dream. Laughing is sacred, dreaming is lonely. You calmed my nerves and tickled me up.60

But what I told my best friend about you…61

You knew it.62

Oh God, why am I not surprised?63

So here I am, typing you out, trapping you onto the screen with all my words, and… I’m smiling a smile straight from my heart. You’ve greatly influenced my art, you know. (No, perhaps not as much as Conor, and Matt… and that complicated someone) 64

You always knew.65

And I think I know you know.66

Sometimes, at least.67

Sometimes, when the sky is clear, and the sun is shining, and I know that you will always be out there somewhere… and the bright skies always remind me of you. And when you were by my house in the light those times. I saw your silhouette like a misty remnant years after you were gone. 68

I’ll remember you forever.69

What I told her about you…70

You know it.71

Me too.72

***73

Did I tell you? 74

No, I never did. 75

A coincidence? Chance? Fate? Destiny? 76

This is fucking Schrodinger’s Cat theorem, but I’m glad you do. Know, I mean. 77

I’m kind of missing the point, and everything else really, but I’m letting go the most beautiful memory of my life now. 78

I’m sorry; but this is not an apology. I’m giving everything old up, and trying to stitch back the new stuff in my life. 79

I can't deal with two conflicting influences (no, I’m not going to continue on with the complicated train of thoughts—that is too…) at the same time, and I’m putting poetry on hiatus, and going back to prose… For a while, at least. 80

I started with prose, and I started with you.81

I breathed a new life upon you stumbling into my life. 82

Those sixteen months were crazy, wild, fun… and it’s all over now. 83

But you knew everything, right? And you knew I’d forget you? But I didn’t let you go. You let me go. 84

So, in the end, it all comes back to the beginning. Of what I knew then, and of what I know now. What you always had known, though. You could have told me so at the start. But it’s okay. There will always be love, and joy, and laughter… and you’re no longer the missing link. I’m writing you out—this time round, I’m giving you air to breathe. 85

***86

I’ll always remember you; as how you always will.87

From beginning till end, there is nothing. 88

Because you were right—there is no end.89

Just a thought, just a word, just a memory… and all this is kind of absurd. 90

But we’re happy apart, and forever doesn’t matter anymore, so let’s just give someone else our hearts. 91

***92

(Okay, that poetry bit was totally not meant to be… there. Okay, I’m sorry—hell yeah, I’m tired of saying sorry! Stop it.) 93

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