Sometimes you're so far away for so long that I begin to wonder if the smile I think about every other moment really belongs to you, or if it's just another rosy imagining of mine. I start to get confused about what has really happened and what I wish had – the thoughts (memories?) of you blur, and I see you through a rainy windowpane, driving away into gray wetness (without me).

You become faint; like mist that's clearly there, all around in my mind, but so frustratingly intangible when I try to grasp you, to look at what you really are.

(my fingers close around a mere vapor feeling)

Sometimes you're gone for so long that I begin to wonder if I ever really met you; or if you were just someone I dreamed up to fall in love with. Little girls do that sometimes, don't they?

But then someone says your name ("What lovely clouds"), and the sharp leaping of my blood could only be caused by someone real.

But other times you're so close, sitting just across the table with a fork and knife in hand. And it's those times, when I can see your smile right in front of me (it is real!) that my blood leaps the sharpest, like a jagged rainbow trout sawing at my veins. I can't say anything in those moments – well, none of the things I want to. I can only bring myself to ask silly things like, "Would you like some green beans?" or "How was your day?" instead of the things I really want to say.

(stay, stay, stay!)

I get so scared in those moments, even though I'm so happy, too. I get scared that you'll finish your meal and thank me and the next morning I'll wake up and you'll be gone again.

And it's sad because being scared doesn't keep those fears from being realized.

I wish I were brave enough to tell you all these things that have been fluttering around in my throat for so long, these words like claustrophobic moths flapping themselves to dusty-winged deaths – so many, many things – but every time, I can only swallow and push back the wings into aching darkness.

And I wish you were brave enough, too, to one day take me by the shoulders and tell me all the things that I can see lurking in your eyes, the shadows that shroud your every expression.

But we're both too afraid, it seems; and I guess it works this way, the way we are now, even if it's a little painful.

It works.

I feel like I only ever write now when I'm in a nostalgic/wistful mood. hah =/