Don’t Go / Hands Down

This time when I drive down the parkway,

My windows are all the way down.

It is mid October and far too cold for any windows to be opened at all

but I do it anyway. 

The dividing lines are blurred.

I can’t see well when I cry and drive

but it’s happening.

I feel everything and nothing all at once.

I don’t want to die 

but I don’t want to be here so I’m driving

until I find where I want to be.

I listen to all the songs that need the windows down,

mostly by the 1975

but they all sound like yours.

The saxophone is a haunting brass.

It is a golden metal tongue

a whisper on the back of my neck

it is there and not there all at once

I can’t stop singing along.

In my dreams I find myself humming

your melody

Don’t Go

I’ll never make it on my own.

But I have.

I still do.

I don’t know the word for it in the moment

but I think of you on my way home

and it doesn’t make me happy anymore.

I make you a latte when you come into my work,

and this time I let myself cry after I give it to you.

My therapist calls this “allowing myself to feel”

but I couldn’t keep this Big Sad on the inside anyway,

so is this it? Is this the closure I’ve been looking for?

The letting go,

the “I don’t need you to apologize” kind of forgiveness?

For a moment,

with the windows down

a different song creates a new soundtrack for this city.

I forget that I miss you.

I go home.

I write a bad poem about you

and it doesn’t make me feel better this time.

I read it over and over and my chest never stops feeling both heavy and empty all at once

I only let myself cry a little bit 

I’m not ready to be done feeling this way

because to be done means I have to let you go.

I unfollow you on Instagram because it doesn’t make me happy anymore 

It makes me want to drive.

When I talk about you in therapy,

my therapist calls it grief so I guess I’m grieving

but you’re not dead.

There was never a funeral

I never got to see the body

I just saw the way you looked at her

and I knew it was over.

I wrote you a letter you’ll never read.

I’ve read it to myself a few times 

and I still can’t imagine what you would say.

I say I’m not angry anymore,

I’m just afraid

and fear can turn anyone into something that they’re not

what I’m trying to say

sounds like driving to nothing at all

just tires on pavement

just city streets that miss you more than I do.

Remember when we drove all night for no good reason,

singing Whitney Houston and the Killers with the windows down?

When we could have kissed while watching the Christmas lights turn on?

Remember when we walked until the fight was over, 

until I couldn’t be mad at you anymore?

Remember when I told you I would never let someone else get in the middle

of our friendship

and now I’m afraid you will never call me in the morning again

never come visit me at work without calling it an accident

never make me be brave in all the ways I never wanted you to

but you did it for me anyway,

and for that and for you I am still so thankful.

Nobody ever taught us how to grieve a dying friendship

So I bury our story along with the hatchet

say I forgive you for leaving me 

and try to mean it

though I may never stop waiting for you to come home.

Yours is the heaviest absence I have ever known

and I mean it

so I lay my hands down alongside our story,

give up on trying to resurrect what doesn’t want to be brought back.

I see you in the city streets but I keep driving

until I’m ready to go home.

I let myself cry it all out

I never give you the letter.

I skip your song when it comes up on the radio.