Open Letter #3, to an ex

You weren't interested.  But I allowed myself to believe you were because you called me, and your voice matched your body, strong and solid and colored by the sun.  You spoke of your ex with a longing you tried to hide but that waved in your eyes like a red flag.  I thought I could be what you missed.

You were safe.  You did not do drugs, did not drive recklessly, did not hit me.  You liked children and loved your family and enjoyed coffee and good food.  You had a car, an apartment, a degree, a plan.  I thought, because of this, I could love you.

What did I want from you?  I remember driving to a Halloween party with you, how the night spread itself like a cloak over the bridge we crossed, over the water below.  I knew I was not enough, and the paint covering my face gave me the courage to tell you to leave if you ever grew tired.  You assured me I did not bore you and I nodded, but I wanted to scratch off my makeup and tear off your hat so you could tell me you knew me and I'd believe it.

I scared you.  You said my anger felt like what the sun does to skin.  It could fill a room like light from a switch.  My anger was the flash before the bang, a jarring promise.  It barreled toward us like x-rays.  It settled in the bones.

Did you know you scared me, too?  Your anger sat between us like a grenade with its pin in, full of potential.  Sometimes I wanted to scream, "Just pull it already!" because I could feel you itching, because the thought of it going off, or worse, never going off, made my skin crawl.

I did not understand you.  Even after paging through the books on your shelves, tracing the faces in your photographs, and listening to your playlists on your iPod, I did not know you.  I only had a collage of titles and names, a catalog of aromas from the kitchen, a collection of glances and touches.  You played me Paul Simon's "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" as if it was for me, but I never knew what you meant by it.  Were you trying to tell me we were too different?  Or were you saying we could make it work anyway?

I baffled you, too.  I wanted you to touch me like the moon touches the tide.  I wanted you to be the big spoon, but if I didn't fit my body to your back, you would leave me to curl up alone on my side of the bed, and you would sleep.  I read you poetry.  I kissed the palms of your hands.  I cried when you would not look at me as I came.  I cried because you could not come while I was searching your eyes for the shadows you never spoke of, the sadness and anger and fear I wanted to hold for you.

You did not miss me when I went on vacation.  I do not know if this is because you did not love me or because you felt I was suffocating you or because you did not trust me.  I did not trust you.  Which is why I read your diary and is how I know you did not miss me when I went away.  You wrote those words and I held them in my chest like a child might hold her breath with her pet dying in her arms, like if I said what I'd done, or if I said your secret aloud, I would lose you.  I read those words and did not leave; you never knew how much I tried to love you.

When you gave me your secrets, your shame, I failed you.  Your confession terrified me.  I could have run, but running's not my style.  I thought I could change you, or that you might decide to change on your own, given my discomfort.  But that's not love, and my fear made you nervous.  You saw that I did not accept you.  You knew my love was conditional, an oxymoron.

You cried and told me you wanted to end it, even as you held my hand, and this was the only time in our relationship that we felt exactly the same way, like two thirsty people in a desert stuffing their mouths with sand to make their insides match their outsides.

I don't know if you loved me.  I know that I wanted to love you, that I wanted to move past the parts of you that jumped out at me like ghosts, that even in the end I was too scared to walk through your halls, that I let the shadows mean more than your hand in mine, that your tears made me feel small.  I am sorry I was not brave enough to love you.  I am sorry I did not tell you how much you scared me; I thought you didn't care.  And maybe you didn't, but I still should have said something, if only so you might have understood you had nothing to be ashamed of. 

I guess I'm writing not to excuse myself but to say I hope you find her, the woman you can look in the eyes while making love because you see how she loves you back, how she would never ask you to change.