Strangers

I submitted the following to UNT's 2022 issue of the North Texas Review.

Maybe we should have stayed strangers, just a long glance from across the bar instead of a lingering touch across the sheets. We could have left each other with short, simple smiles instead of long, steaming tears in a chain restaurant parking lot on a random Thursday in October. The wind ripped between us as we ripped apart what was left of you and me. It didn’t have to happen at all.

Maybe we shouldn’t have jumped into that pool of the future. How foolish we were for jumping in! It was dark and we didn’t know how far it went down, we should have known that our feet wouldn’t touch and that we could never tread water forever. We should have known that one of us would sink under the cold glass waves and get caught in the current below.

Something restless moved in me when I first saw you. I knew that moment would be one that I would never forget. Like that moment would be tucked amongst all the others on the bookshelf of my life. It would be bound in leather and lined with gold and would shine even when there was no light. You will always be my light!—either a beautiful blazing star or a house fire. A light to guide me home or one to warn me of the deadly rocks on the shoreline.

Maybe I shouldn’t have crossed the bar. I should have stayed in my seat instead of leaning myself into your world. I tried to tell the nagging optimist in my chest to quiet down, but she didn’t listen—she never does! She kept skipping and stuttering and shuttering, putting all her might into moving my body forward and leaping into that pool with you. She was blinded, unable to see that the memory of you in my head might end up being pain rather than pleasure. That nagging optimist never thinks things through, she always believes she can swim in that pool forever, no matter how deep.

It’s so cold in here now that you have gone and I don’t know how much longer I can keep my head above the water. I can feel the undercurrent clawing at me like the monsters on the empty side of the bed do when my feet stick out of the blankets at night.

I would have wondered what your lips felt like on mine, but at least I wouldn’t have to live life knowing how hard it is to live without them. I would have wondered what your voice sounded like, but my ears would have never been able to dance the same way they do when you say my name or call me sweetheart or tell me you love me. But how hard it is to hear it from someone else, now. It’s even harder to rouse the nagging optimist from her defeat. She is so tired and even puddles seem like oceans.

Maybe we should have stayed strangers and saved ourselves the trouble of slowly drowning.