h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I browse through old memories
Photo albums in my mind
I laugh and I cry, I remember the shock of it all
The surprises, good and bad,
The varied triumphs that I’ve had
And the pitfalls.
And as I browse, I suddenly find
You.

You are laughing,
Your hand over your mouth,
Your blonde hair
And your white eyes
And your black shirt,
Soft black pants.
I smile, a little, remembering your refusal
To wear denim like the rest of us.
“It chafes,” pansy,
But all in fun.
I like this memory,
Though it makes me a little sad
Though perhaps not sad
Just quieter in my head.
Melancholy?

Then there are others,
Other memories of you now.
You are crying,
In that awful brown suit,
With most of your friends around you
But one.
And me, standing by you,
Hoping that that is enough,
I don’t know what to do
Though I want to make you happy.
I know it will not happen,
But I want to try
So I stand at your side for a day,
There if you need me
But you never do.

And then there is her,
I remember her then,
A match and a contrast at once.
I remember her confusion,
Her panic,
I remember how it went,
What I knew then and what I know now.
Both of you were caught in circumstance,
But you let it rip you apart
From yourselves
From each other
From me.
And when you decided that she should leave you
You decided,
Then you blamed her.
And she was too ashamed to come back in the end.
So you feigned a hate
To hide the pain
Of seeing each other every day
And never being able to touch.

I remember me,
In the middle,
As always.
You left me when you made her leave you.
Why should you not?
I was no more than her then,
Just a shadow,
A broken reflection,
The same,
But lesser,
Why should you not leave me?
But I would not be left.
I remember how I followed you,
Clinging to you like a wet feather.
How could I know the pain in your heart?
How could I know I would push you too far?
I would have known,
Should have,
If I had only seen through your weak disguise
Been less self-centered
You night not have broken
And break you did.

In this memory, you are not smiling.
There is a hardness in your eyes
And then you are gone.
I remember you were always gone.
There for a second,
Then disappearing,
Like a phantom.

Then came the day when you truly left.
I stood
Ten feet away
While you said goodbye to everyone you would miss.
And there I was
Thinking, “I know
We aren’t friends anymore.
I am not a part of his life now.
But maybe
Maybe
Six years will mean something to him.
Just enough
To say goodbye
For the last time.”
But there was nothing.
No even a look.
Our eyes never met.

When you came back
Unexpectedly,
We both pretended not to see each other.
Pretended that eight years had not passed between us.
Pretended that we had never been more than we were now.
Shadows
Passing each other without more than a glance.
But there was always that,
The unreadable glance.
And when we spoke,
It was as if nothing of consequence
Had ever happened
In our relationship.
We were only acquaintances
We always had been.
There was never a time when we were a unit
Thought of always together,
The three of us
You and I and her.

I do not want you back,
I don’t think,
Anymore.
I just wrote to ask you
Who you want to be.
Because I was talking to a friend of ours
And he made me think of you.
I guess the first heartbreak
Is always the hardest to get over.