Truly Love

I fell in love forever ago with a girl who loved to sing. She would hum pop songs when she walked places, and belt out rock classics when she thought she was alone. She took my hand before I took hers, and that meant the world to me. I knew her all my life. We grew up together on swingsets and playground slides that burned bare legs in July. We were long blissful silence and endless summer nights. We were counting the stars and the freckles on her shoulders. We were small smiles in middle school hallways and senseless wordgames that existed only to keep us together for a few more minutes. We were unspoken and discarded when the nights grew cold. We were young.

I fell in love years ago with a girl I never really saw. She kept me up until dawn with boisterous inexplicable laughter and an abundance of words that danced through my head. She had long dark hair that got in the way when we kissed. She held me closer than anyone ever has. We rode busses and went places just to be together. We smiled softly at one another as we looked for trees to sneak behind. We held each other in early spring warmth, by crashing waves and blooming flowers. We held each other until the sun set. She couldn’t stay until morning. She didn’t mean to cry so much. And me, I meant to be stronger.

I fell in love months ago with a girl I never knew. We laughed together at jokes that could never make sense, and repeated them quietly to one another when the days piled up and blocked the sun. I tried to forget the look in her eyes and how I felt when I watched her cry. I never understood why she walked so close to me, or why I slept better having been with her. I never understood her head on my shoulder or 2 a.m in February. I never understood the songs we loved or the way I’d tell her things I would no one else. I never understood why she never understood me.

I fell in love today with a girl I’ll never see again. The sky was sputtering rain; the clouds were thick and angry. I saw a girl from my car’s window, as I drove down Century Street. She was the picture of irony in a bright red sundress on the sidewalk. A simple black umbrella kept her sheltered from the storm, and I remember noticing her deliberate pace. She walked slowly, calmly and beautifully, an unbelievable vision of serenity on a rainy day. The car wouldn’t stop. I watched her in the rear view mirror as she took a moment to lower the umbrella and let the rainwater fall on her face. She looked up and spun, a graceful dancer at the side of the road, burning angelic fervour, becoming in an instant a moment I’d replay in my head for years to come. The light ahead was green, the rainwater obscured the rear window and that which was behind me was gone.

I’ll fall in love tomorrow with a girl who isn’t real. A fictional character based on some ideal I see in someone I know or, worse, see in someone I merely glimpse on the street. She’ll be some unbelievable amalgamation of a ballerina and a doctor or a teacher, an actress and a popstar. She’ll appear in a dreamscape, a vision with too much hair and a strapless dress. And maybe we’ll dance or merely laugh and talk, soundtracked by a cheesy love song from the 1980s that screams of the brilliance of needing someone and the ultimate reality of love. I think we’ll dance because I’ve always wanted to dance. We’ll dance to a slow song, swaying together alone in an ornate ballroom, her body pressed against mine. She makes me feel warm. And I press my face against hers so I can feel her smile, and then she pulls away from me so I can twirl her. The music swells and I don’t know what colour her eyes should be. And she’s spinning and spinning and spinning…

I wonder if she’ll stop.