Away

The years have faded since then,
like clouds engulfing the moon.
Over beach-side neighborhoods
adorned with luminous youth,
we held each other in a simple way;
In a way lacking the complexities of age,
reason, and familiarity.

Since then, we've been apart.
I've been here, you've been there,
and we're now distanced by light-years.
Though an electronic signal
would suffice to reconnect,
neither of us make a move.
Like the opening play in a game of chess,
this needs to be well-calculated,
well thought-out,
and worthy of the opponent.
But, nothing short of the infinite
would be worthy of such a reunion.

I still carry you with me.
Like a bag full of bones,
I've tried to distribute you,
hide you away, hide us away,
but the incision remains there,
bleeding out slowly at every turn.

But maybe it's not you,
maybe it's what you embodied,
what you idealized.
How could it be you?
How could what I see now
be at all continuous with who you were?
How could "who you were" have ever been real?
But it was you.
It was you in all your glory, beauty,
contempt, change, betrayal,
loyalty, joy, and silence.
It's you that I lost.
The you of my dreams, the you
lodged deep within by subconscious.
And it's time to realize a simple fact
always known, but painfully ignored.

It was me.
I killed us.
I made you who you became,
I made you leave me,
I made you cut yourself off
like I've cut myself off.
I took out your eyes,
the eyes that saw what we once did,
looking together out of your window,
seeing stars as symbols of something.
Something bigger, something eternal.
Something more than what passes.
Something more than what fades.
That will never again be reflected in your eyes,
and it will never again be reflected in mine.

But it was me.
And it's over.
And this thought,
these words,
are a message in a bottle
lost at sea.