Fountainhead

F,

There is a book in my possession. The pages have been yellowed by time, dog-eared by use and it smells lightly of mold. It's green, embossed and a long time ago, it used to be yours. I flip through the pages and I find penciled exaltations and notes to yourself, reasoning out the many revelations you'd discovered between the covers. I find you, as you were, in your naked minimalism, in your boiled down brevity.

I pictured you as you were on those starry, summer nights - so naive about life, so naive about life, so unaware of what the world would do to you, so far away from the person you would become. A summer so many years ago, when all of you were a girl who loved a boy, when your lips caused riots when they touched your skin. Nights when the love of a girl burned more bridges than it built, when neurosis was a necessity and a never-ending battle against the withering of novelty, when your skin was too tender to withstand the worldly wars and battle the bane of such free giving, when your truth was your power and your pride licensed you to peruse prodigal primacy.

Sometimes, I wonder how different the course of our lives would've been if we had crossed paths earlier, if I had been that boy who you loved with all your heart and soul, with no strings attached, selflessly, ruthlessly; if I had been privy to the truest love that you could give. But then I settle on the alienable fact that I would choose the you that I know now, the one that is broken and untrusting, the one with the reputation, the one that is cancerous to care for, the one that would think twice before doing something silly and then do it anyway, the one that knows better, the one that knows me.

I choose you - because you are what I need, what I want - because you make me fight you to free you, but most importantly, because I can't conceive of another day without you here with me.

R.