Forgotten on purpose, dismissed with intention. Lock rusted and key thrown away.
But these things we do have a way of undoing themselves.
I peeked through a crack in the door and expected to hardly recognize you. I expected to be a simple voyeur peeping at nameless characters. A decade passing would have destroyed your features and rendered you a stranger to me. Perhaps you would have a wife, children, new hobbies, friends I had never heard of.
I thought it would be like watching a play and leaving before the houselights came on, the actors never knowing what they unfolded before me as I hid in the darkness. Where would you be living and what kind of work would you do? I expected to get away with it, you see. I expected my presence to leave no mark, for any hint of recognition behind your eyes to be completely eaten away by the tides of over 10 years gone by. When I crept close and pressed my face against that crack I expected many things.
I did not expect to see my own face staring back at me.
And I did not expect to stagger back from the sight of how young and beautiful we once were. And I did not expect you to have changed so little. And I did not expect the flashbacks of us in New York, drinking and fighting in the streets. And I was not prepared for your love to be as hard and fierce and desperate as it had been then, and I forgot you are a poet and that pathos does little to destroy our love, instead feeding it and using it to fuel the fire that keeps us up scratching our way through stacks of paper at 1:00 in the morning.
And I was overcome with a dark longing to rip the door open and expose myself to all your rage and all your love and all your sickness because you used to say I was the only one that could save you and I always scoffed, but seeing you now, and seeing myself, I'm beginning to wonder if it's true.
There is no wife. No children. No idyllic house up north. You do not build tiny ships in bottles or work in the telecommunications industry.
Instead you move from town to town, slinging drinks and making friends you have no intention of keeping. You're fit and age has not touched you, except in the eyes, which are dark from too many parties and too many late nights, and too many highways burned beneath you. You are hiding your weariness and looking for the next escape.
We are so much alike. How could I help but despise you?
But you were too great for me back then. You were a sad and wild thing and I couldn't withstand the fierceness of your love or the calamity of your affection. I didn't have the rage that I have now, and I couldn't cope with your darkest moments. I gave you up and ran away, first from boyfriend to boyfriend and then from town to town. I was afraid of the things I thought you would bring forth in me, not knowing that the grating of time would reveal so much more.
I am as sick as you are, and saving you is the only thing that will save me.
So come to me you obsidian lion, and lie in my arms like a lamb. Sheath your claws and hide your teeth in wooly subterfuge. Bleed in my hands and roar in my ears and this time, this time I will stay. You will finally have what you want and I will be just as disappointing as you need me to be. And I will watch as the sheepskin falls and the teeth come out and when you lunge I will be ready, I will be ready, I will be ready.
And I will eat you alive.
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