I'm Waiting for Tulips

I was so afraid. Unnecessary, irrelevant fears that cloud over your mind and create tension throughout each limb. Worry that can only be calmed by the sound of the rain and the faded daze that comes over the city during a downpour. But the secret was well kept and I walked off the elevator alone. He waited by the door with a forced expression of casual disinterest.

He took me to our park, despite the season. Old women and mothers with babies smiled at us kindly. We reminded them of something, perhaps of potential. We walked until my feet were numb and my heels were worn away by the hard sidewalks. He bought me roses.

My hand adjusts to the pattern of this writing. After filling notebooks with poems that condense and divide, this method of expression confuses. I have forgotten how to create sentences that roll into each other like waves. In these stories I find myself kissing the grass and planting seeds in your cheeks. Despite what I know.

I walk through the city and pray quietly to myself. I analyze fashion trends, study your laws to bring clarity to my own, and stay awake too late to reread your poems.

I watch you walk away in your baby-blue crocks. Smiling to myself because you are not for me. I have been given the blessing of time, the miracle of the continued search, and the opportunity to expand myself in ways I never thought possible.

But at the moment that he leaves I find myself thinking. If this was a movie I would turn around and you'd be standing right behind me. Smiling softly, the way you did that day at the park.