You and I

In the end it always becomes too much to handle, the childish hope that if you just keep ignoring something and pretend like it never happened, it will eventually go away. It doesn't.

I'm on the bed with all curtains closed and a letter in my hand, a sealed envelope with my name and address handwritten in black ink. It's from him, the boy I grew up with, the first love of my life, the one I did something terrible to and ended up not seeing for over five years.

When we finally met again in a Gauloise haze at a party somewhere he was so different and so very much the same, all at once. We never talked about it, I just started to call him by another name, one that was never his: Carl. He didn't ask me why, maybe he understood or maybe he just didn't care.

It was all about timing I guess. When I saw him in the right light after so many years it was already too late. He had found someone else, a dear friend of mine, someone I love equally much but in a very different way. I had to put a wasteland and three hours between us just to be able to breathe for a while, but it only works for as long as you let it.  

And now he's written to me. It took me two weeks to get here and it's too bright even in the darkness of mother's apartment but I have to open it and when I do all I find is a quote from a song and the words "I know what this means to you".

And it does, it so does. He understands it like no one else and that's why I love him.