You Never Saw Me

I tried staring at you in class while the teacher wasn’t looking. I slid a note in your backpack and the next day I brushed my hair and wore my best dress. I tried smiling at you until my face hurt, and when we met afterwards, I tried to be perfect. To say the right words. To kiss you on the cheek before you left.

I tried writing your name a thousand times with a piece of chalk so that my hand could never forget it. I tried making a drawing of you and me with hearts all over. When I learned how to write, I wrote you poems. When I learned about life, I tried with sex.

I tried with marriage. I was the most faithful and loving wife. I cooked dinner for us and served it with wine and candles. I washed the dishes afterwards. I tried caressing your back in the dark and whispering over and over in your ear the name my hand couldn’t forget.

I tried by giving you children, little people who looked like you and me.

I tried by showing you how vulnerable I was and cried in front of you during a whole night so you could see how I could cry.  I tried with a blood pact while you were sleeping. I tried with witchcraft. With religion. I tried looking at your eyes without saying a single word. I bought you flowers.

I tried by writing suicide notes I hid in places where you could always find them. I tried plastic surgery: lips, nose, cheeks, the whole Joan Rivers package.

I woke you up in the middle of the night to tell you about my dreams and how you were in all of them.

I did everything I could think of, even things I wouldn’t dare to write in detail. I murdered, I kidnapped, I was cruel.

However, and this is what I fail to understand, in spite of everything I did, and regardless of all the things I tried, you never saw me.