Pretending

I remember him just standing there.

Everyone said he looked good and I had been told countless times that night that I looked wonderful but I couldn’t help but notice that his smile never really reached his eyes, and his laughter sounded like a foreign language, and not the kind you’re in the middle of learning or the kind you’ve just forgotten, or the kind you can remember, no his laughter was like a language you can never comprehend no matter how many hours you spend trying to piece it together, believe me, I would know.

I remember standing in front of him for a lifetime

My eyes soaking in every minute I had left of him, trying to hold onto the color of his eyes and the shape of his smile and the way love used to radiate off him like sunshine in the days he belonged to me and his sunshowers, trying to offer up the fact that he came when I asked him as evidence that somewhere in his monstrosity the boy I knew still existed, and breathed, and cared, and wanted me to find him just as desperately as I was looking.

I remember talking.

But the confrontation was not like the one in my imagination, he never gave me sorries or any more proof that he was who I thought he was, or even screaming, I was shouting grievances at a boy who didn’t exist, this one forgets me and tells me not to take it personally, this one worships his iPhone only slightly less than he worships himself, this one uses my poems against me even though I don’t think he cares for them anymore, he rolls his eyes when I tell him I’m looking for the old him, just stares when I ask WHO ARE YOU.

I remember almost crying.

Because this one waited for me to shut up so he could ask for forgiveness and now I regret my answer every day of my life because

I GAVE HIM YES.

And

YES means its okay and its not and

YES means he’s the same person and he isn’t and

YES means he can go back to his new life and he shouldn’t  and

YES means he’s in control, and maybe he is but

YES means you own me and YOU DON’T!

And I think somewhere maybe I knew that, even then.

Because when he smiled and his eyes stayed empty, I mirrored his moveents and he took me in his arms for what he must’ve learned was the appropriate amount of time ( 1 2 3 BREAK) and somewhere I knew it was the last time I would feel him hold me even if he wasn’t really him anymore, I let myself pretend it was the boy who showered me with compliments and held me when I was crying and took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes and told me it was okay when I was having a breakdown and who smiled with his eyes more than his mouth, I pretended it was him when I let a few tears escape and ruin his too-white dress shirt’s perfection and I was still pretending when he said “I’ll see you soon” and I said “okay” because inside I knew I never would see him again, and I never did.

I am still pretending now.

And even though he won’t acknowledge it

He is too.