Postcards

I’m travelling through the memories like a road map

from that long ago day when we packed my things into the car.

When we drove into the desert on a hot summer day

and I wept with a force that I’d never felt in my life.

I remember that day as if it was only yesterday

and how you didn’t know what to do with my tears then.

You said, ‘let’s go back and spend another day’.

when all I needed was for you to draw me in.

Draw me closer and put your arms around me

and tell me that you wanted me to come with you.

Instead I remember feeling alone and terrified

and that I was somehow supposed to do it differently for you.

I felt that way all along the journey

when I was more scared than I had ever been.

Couldn’t you just once have made me feel like I was ok

that I think, was the tone we set for our life.

I didn’t know how to trust you when you put up that wall

that wall that you put up when you were scared.

We probably should have turned around that day

and you should have gotten right back on the plane.

Armed with a bottle so I could sleep at night

a way to drown out the terror that filled me up.

From the beginning I didn’t know how to turn to you

and now all these years later, I’m crying because you are gone.

When I walk back through the memories of those few days

I’m shocked, really, that we made it as far as we did.

Through the years that followed and the grief that I went through on my own

you never knew what to do when I cried.

You never knew just to hold me and take me in

take me in to the deepest parts of you.

Somehow you could make me feel guilty for feeling

no wonder I could never let go in front of you.

Where did we go from being in love to being strangers?

We were strangers who tried to be something we were not.

We didn’t know each other then and tried to build a life

I know you better now than I ever knew myself.

For five and a half years I listened to you talk

and for five and a half years I never spoke the words.

I’m speaking now but the only one listening is me

not surprising that’s the way it’s always been.