Wishing for other people to be miserable won’t make me any happier.
But I’m nothing if not a trier.
I hope every time you look up and see a beautiful cloudy sky, or you watch a sunset, or you see a contrail streak across the blue – I hope you see me. There by your side, with my weather book, quickly looking up the classifications to check if I was right. Kissing you if I was. Kissing you anyway if I wasn’t.
I hope you can’t hear Taylor Swift without seeing me dance around our living room in your shirt and my underwear. I hope you see my face when you see hers. I hope you can never erase that image from your mind. I hope you have to skip the song or change the radio channel.
I hope going to the beach on stormy days brings back memories of Lyme Regis. I hope you taste Cornish Rattler and remember the night we skipped along the beach singing Coldplay to the stars. Amaretto burning on our tongues.
I hope every pair of blue eyes you gaze into pale in comparison to the ocean deep, golden-flecked, vast expanse of mine.
I hope you can’t see a pair of cowboy boots without thinking of the summers I spent never taking mine off. Summer dresses, skinny jeans, tight little skirts, nothing at all, always paired with my cowboy boots. I hope you remember the look of horror on my face as I hurled them across the room at you. One by one.
I hope you can’t go on a long run without remembering every run we had together. In the rain, side by side, stride for stride. Matching each other’s pace.
I hope you can’t watch i-robot, because it reminds you that it was playing in the background the night we both had sex for the first time. I hope you can’t unsee my i heart NY t-shirt, and the sight of my face as we came at the same time as each other.
I hope you do. Because I can’t unsee you too.
For me,
it’s plaid shirts and skinny jeans. Paolo Nutini songs and Dr Who references. The All-American Rejects and Adele. I still remember the gait of your walk, the flop of your boyband hair, the freckles on your shoulders constellations to me. Everything Everything’s first album. Then their second. The smell of your cologne.
It hurts, because I can’t unsee or undo any of it.
It’s on repeat in my head.
Like a broken cassette.
But the music is familiar,
and I’m not ready to stop listening just yet.
stormsinteacups 