a glass half full

I remember seeing the pessimist down the street. The night was cold, and I, soaked with tears and half-wit regret of a painstakingly calculated end to a romance not even a quarter of an hour before, walked down the quiet rode, frozen by both the ghastly temperature and atmosphere of fear that worked to disable my joints. He stood alone about 5 meters away from the curb, uncaring of the cars that may not see him, completely indifferent to the shadows that shrouded his body and face, only observing the ones that I knew enveloped his face and heart.

I remember walking towards the pessismist. My heart, despite its common optimistic disposition, was heavy with dread about the conversation that was to pass. I had not seen him in months and had barely spoken a whisper to him since the day he told me, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." I remember I had responded to him, "The grass isn't exactly greener on the fat kids side." He did not laugh, he merely turned away from me, taking the letter I had written explaing my indiscretions with him. I thought, perhaps, that aleveating such contemplations and explaining my actions he might had taken the very life out of them in our one sided transaction. Unfortunatly he still haunted my pen and the inner realms of my ventricles, pumping words through my veins and out the end of my pen, clouding my prose as much as my blood. It made me laugh then. He had always accused me of being a contridiction. I do recall, however, that I had also divulged the reasons I had loved him and refuted the reasons why I was sleeping in a bed with another, making his letter the most seamless piece of work I had written. 

'To a pessimist' I had thought to myself as my toe passed a small pebble, sending it skipping in his direction.

I remember waving to the pessimist, and him not waving back. His observance, however, of a clenched fist and what I assumed to be a wry smile, beckoned me forward. I had always known him to be this way, intrincintly aimiable in presenting a hardshell, as to best not give away the softer underside of his character. Upon reaching him I shuffled my feet, biding time. Although I was optimistic with the truth that my words had to offer, I felt reproach towards the idea of speaking them, for I knew his "glass empty" take on the world. Then, recalling the empty glass, I felt my lips unbuckle as the words fell free from my mouth as I attempted to fill the glass.

"I know I have hurt you. I know that I have jerked you from side to side of the divide between what seperates us. I have set your world on fire and left you to burn alone with the cooling embers of love. I know that I do not deserve your forgiveness, but must confess that I am here now asking for it." I had begun with a cascading force. "I am not asking you to not sit here and pretend that we both regard this distance as the best choice, because it's not. I can see it in you. I know you."

I had paused, but was too scared to observe him, and began again as to not let my tear ducts and nature betray me.

"You spend your nights alone in your house, as I spend mine alone in a crowded room of another's. Your heart is my home, and I am so sick and tired of being away from it. You have asked me to never speak the words 'I need you', you're 'most important', or 'i love you' to you ever again, but i can no longer hold my words with clenched teeth. I went to see her tonight and ended it."

I remember that those words had burst free from my mouth that night when I had spoken to the liar. My truth had fractured her world like it had broken my teeth, and I had left both of them scattered on the pavement of that argumentitive street corner where I left her screaming at me all the hate I had not known her not capable of.

"Please know that it was not for you, as I know that such simple eliminations (that should have been done so long ago) could never rememdy the wounds that I have inflicted upon you. For this I am sorry. But please know that I am not offering salt to them, but merely my tender and true words of love...
I did not end it because I felt that it was the only way to set things right. I ended it because I've finally come to terms with the fact that I have never felt more lonely being with someone and not having you, I'm sick of all these goodnights with her if all I have of you is a goodbye. They mean nothing, absolutely nothing.
So please, by all means, if you still see it fit to end it all now and bury your head in a dune of Zoloft, the please, do. But you're not doing me, or yourself any favours..."

I recall looking into the eyes of the pessimist before he had become the pessimist. He saw me with the lightest of heart, and with not even the faintest distrust. 
I remember when I saw my reflection, or at least his interpretation of me, in them as I awaited his reply: a storm, constantly turning and deceiving, leaving nothing but wretched destruction in my wake. I watched as his once loose composure became tight knit like a house boaded up, anticipating the vicious lashes and licks of rain and wind. A part of me begged to try and pry them open, but knew all to well the nature of the cigarette he had lit, and the inhale of both poise and control to follow. He flicked his diminishing stick reproachfully in my direction.

"Is that all you came to say?" He asked finallu.

Is that all? I laughed to myself a little in earnest. After all of the failed endevours pretaining to the poorly guided adevetures of love, after all of the ill-fated endings of every single small beginning between us, after every hearbroken sentiment and all of the shards of trust had been collected, all he has to ask was "Is that all you came to say?

"I thought it meant a little more than that," I admitted.

He paused, and I thought for a moment that I saw a glimmer of hope as his eyes traced me over.

"Such pretty words will only get you so far in an ugly world." nope, just the eye of the storm. "Before the week is out you will be back to your repetoir."

And with that he knocked the glass over, spilling every word of hope down the lonely and ill lit street as he turned his back to me and walked away.

Although I knew that his reaction would be that of substantial reprise to his character, I had always been one of the few not to be slighted, but rather edeared, by the more fragile side of his nature. It was now that I saw that it was something that I had broken long ago

"Humphrey!" I had called up to him as his finger-tips embraced the door handle. He grasped it, turned it, and for a second I did not think he would turn around.

"What Lia?" He asked, begrudingly keeping his palm rooted to the brass knob.

"Goodnight."

I remember seeing only the best about the pessimist that night. This was not due to the ill-lighting, nor ignorance to the shadows that has bewitched and ensared him. It was not love that blinded me, though i must admit it is what bonded me to these enigma's. Despite these remorse clad demons that still find me from time to time, I often wonder what he remembers about me. I would like to think that perhaps, his world weighted shoulders turned away from me again and his back disappeared behind the door, that there was a smile on his face. That perhaps that he had realized that he had forgot to remember that he was my glass half empty, and that I was his glass half full.