rivers and roads

before i opened my eyes at 6:30 i wanted this day to be over.
but i pulled myself out of bed, like a big girl, and went to work.

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i loved a boy more than once with my teenage heart. after we put an end to us he was always there, in my mind-- memories and dreams and everything between.  i cried {more often than should be admitted} over our silly inconsequential relationship and its demise. i could not fathom how the hurt could ever disappear.
and then one day, i woke up, accompanied by the realization that i had not thought of him the day before.

after acclimatizing to this new development a week would pass, and then a month, and then another, without him drifting into conscious awareness. my thoughts rest on him once in a blue moon now-a-days, for a good memory or two, but i wave them away with warm regard but firm resolve.

fresh wounds and heartache are not as easy to brush aside.

with my first love i did not believe any passage of time would allow me to compile the pieces of my broken heart back into one.

but it did.

perhaps time does not heal all wounds, but every day adds a stitch. 

once the raw edges have come together enough, you snip the threads reminding you of him. and then--then it fades-- to a dull scar, visible only in the right light. it's a life lesson every daughter learns independently, though their mother rehearsed the cliche words while stroking their hair and supplying the kleenex. 

mothers always have a way of knowing how the world works. 

i have learned that same lesson again and again-- falling in and out of infatuation and fascination, butterflies, and maybe even something resembling love--with each passing hour the perfect memory of his hands in yours fades; soon the significance of his eyes and the exact sent of his kiss ebbs away, until you are finally you again. you breathe, without his fingers intertwined in yours. 

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one day i know i will hardly remember-- his rustic smell, the lulling tone of his voice, the magnetic chemistry of his smile and mine...

but today, all the cliches in the world could not stop the tears that spilled over in mourning.

at the approximate instant i realized i loved him-- not in full but in part-- i saw the impossibility. i glared at our incompatibility and incapability to be together --an us-- without changing the other. 

i will miss him like hell when he leaves. 

tomorrow. perhaps tomorrow i can begin to forget my feelings and thread the needle, to stitch my heartache into a sad memory and find myself back where i became lost.