I have been desperately thrashing at the mysterious layer of bricks veiling the future in an attempt to answer a solitary question that is driving me mad: there is an unexplored universe next door, will you come with me?
It started early in the summer.
I woke up from an unusually long drinking binge to not only a vicious hangover, but a lingering face projected on the backs of my eyelids. Due to the foolish amounts of alcohol consumed, I was unable to recollect the hazy details surrounding that face. To say I became obsessed with courting him would be a lack of intensity. Details were steadily revealed to me, but the cloudy specifics never became completely lucid. I was visibly overtaken and consumed by this face and immediately wanted to know all of the perplexing eccentricities of his character.
It didn’t take long until we became inseparable. We spent days utterly captivated by each other in the immobilizing heat. He told me my lavender curls reminded him of a mermaid. I told him the scar above his right eyebrow resembled Frankenstein. His innocent fingertips grazed my porcelain skin as if it were made of glass, cautious not to damage the delicate exterior. I breathed him in and felt dizzy by his allure.
Something about the warmth of the midsummer sun, the dancing clouds, his golden brown skin, and the endless nights under the amethyst sky made that entire summer feel like one drastically prolonged kaleidoscopic daydream. When the end of August crept up behind us we didn’t know what had hit us. All of the sudden, time was fleeting so rapidly we could not stop for a second to catch our breath.
The first time we said goodbye was in my driveway. I cried until I felt dazed and weak; he wiped my tears and embraced my trembling body in the moonlight. The future seemed so emphatically against us, though I so desperately prayed for the contrary. As frantically as I attempted to hold onto that summer, a new chapter was opening up and there was nothing that could stop it from becoming a colorful, utopian memory.
Since then, we’ve said goodbye in parking lots, hotels, out of car windows, city streets, and bedrooms and even though a year has gone by, the torture of watching you leave never gets any easier.
It was the winter of my life and he was my only essence of warmth. I remember being entirely submerged inside of his oversized jacket, embracing him tightly with every ounce of strength I had. Whenever he left, the sky instantaneously shifted to a pale, lackluster gray, and my body shivered from the agonizing chill.
We went on enchanting escapades, hand-in-hand in the frosty air, and kissed under fireworks in Central Park. The cold, crystal January sky led to a desperate desire to eliminate the distance between us. But, reality hit us like a ton of bricks; I had to attend my last semester of school and he had to go back to work. Temporary insanity. Being apart again planted pessimistic, impractical thoughts in our minds and misery in our hearts. I held onto his sentences, his smiles, his unspoken thoughts, and his glaucous blue eyes. Time was our enemy, but we annihilated it, because after a bone-chilling winter, waking up to a warm spring day is pure ecstasy.
Since then, we have said hello in doorways, city streets, parking lots, cars, driveways, and bedrooms. Side-by-side we have said hello to new places, new people, new experiences, and new beginnings. However, one new beginning remains unknown.
The universe is calling. It’s time to explore.
Life has brought me to a colorful room, and surrounding me is an infinite number of doors. The one I choose to take can determine the next “hello.” But I don’t want to go alone. I can’t go alone. Will you come with me?