In between the past and the future

Thirty years.

Thirty years and I have realised that love has no perfect timeline to follow; there is no ideal path to falling in love.

There is no right or wrong way to give yourself to someone in pieces shattered from another, and completely raw that you don't even realise who you are or how you like your coffee. There is no manual or map to finding yourself when you've fallen off the grid.

But somehow you were ready all the same and accepted me and sewed me back together. No: you made me new.

There are words throughout history for what I feel: Rebirthed. My very own Renaissance period. 

A renewal, a resurrection, a resurgence. A revival.

And Now...

Love can be felt in your arms reaching towards me and enveloping me in the darkness as we're snuggled in bed close.

Love can be seen in the curve of your smile and the way you look at me like I am all you see.

Love can be shared in every bite of our dessert, in every inside joke, in each pet becoming our home. 

Love can be seen in your actions as you plan dates and wash dishes, and cook pasta, and fold laundry.

Love can be waited to be said aloud until the socially right moment, but it doesn't mean it wasn't felt before.

Love is unravelling your walls in bookshop aisles, glancing over covers and glazing over as they find mine.

The receiver is never shocked. The receiver will return the three most important words you have waited a lifetime to hear. And to feel.

Whether it's right by others isn't important; sometimes you just know.

Love is yearning to touch you, to kiss you, to feel you in my heart; treasuring the ordinary with you.

Reaching over to hold my hand against my thigh warmed by the sun and my own racing heart, and I look at you and love you right in that moment between the past and the future, in the short space between my heart beats.

I heal.

- Nicole xx

Loving you was a dream

 I watched my brother get married today.

My only brother.

They looked deeply into each other's eyes and declared that forever was long enough for them and not a nightmare waiting to unfold.

And I remembered ourselves declaring the same yet failing somewhere along the way. 

I know now that we should have never gone through with it. We were young and in love but not a "match made in heaven" like we had always wished we were.

There is nothing wrong with being with someone for the moments you want to share with someone else. And I never, not once, regretted going to all these beautiful places with you.

I write you these poems, for me. 

I write them to understand and then, hopefully, move on. Not to forget but to remember and think of fondly instead of with pain and heartbreak.

I write these poems for me, not you.

You, the essence, lives on with me, but you the man who was dishonest and horrible and pushed me to the brink... You will never be a part of this poem. You were abandoned the moment I left the house.

I watched my brother and sister-in-law move forward with their lives while I, too, move forward with mine.

Loving you was a dream. 

Living with you was a nightmare.

Good night.

- Nicole xx

Memories = lifetimes

When it's late at night and 

I'm laying staring at the decorative moulding 

on the ceiling

making out it's curves in the moonlight

I have flashbacks 

to when it was only you and me.

Us.

Standing in a parking garage, deep below the earth, waiting for you to pay the ticket so we can go back to our home and cuddle under the blanket on the couch and watch our favourite movie for the millionth time.

After a date, listening to our favourite songs on the drive home with your hand on my lap, smiling through your glasses. 

Feeling the sand between my toes at the beach in Dubrovnik, watching the waves cover your legs as you dig through the sand on the edge of the world to delicately pick out the soft shards of sea glass for me.

I've lived many lives in 29 years

I thought I'd live the rest of them with you

Now I'm back in my 18 year old body

Starting anew

Angry at the world

I remember my first love

My first heart break

My first guilt

My first separation, like a part of my heart was ripped out and left behind.

I remember my wedding

And I remember being alone

I remember dancing with everyone but you while you drank beer outside with the boys. Maybe that's why we ran low so quickly.

I have lived a lifetime with you

Now I live a lifetime in my dreams where I see our house, our children, our cats, our family -- and I forget when I wake up it's all been erased.

I see you in the waves at the beach

And in my nephew's brown eyes

And in the way my student throws back and laughs with a cunning grin like you did when you were up to something.

And I see you at the table playing boardgames with me until 2am with a cat on each of our laps.

And I feel your warmth in Nala's purrs as I cuddle her at night.

And I hear your voice in my ear teaching me how to drive around the tight mountainous corners on our road trips.

And I see you napping on the couch after a long day of teaching, curled up with your hands over your heads and a blanket half-strewn over your tangled legs.

And I see 

I see

I see the times I shouted at you, and your strained eyes, and your averted gaze while I pummelled you verbally over and over again, deserving in the moment but undeserving by all means. A horrifying truth to realise too little, too late. I see my anger through your eyes, hands raised, brows narrowed, hatred in my eyes at the life you had torn from me until we reached this precipice of no return.

I see now, looking in the mirror, what you saw all these years and how I took you down while you lives your lifetimes in fear of change and unrest and terror, while I lived in frustration and confusion and distrust.

But how wondrous is it to imagine another lifetime ahead of me?

A second life full of all the hope and dreams I wanted, laid out to start anew.

And to imagine and yearn for the same for you.

Will it be hard?

Will it be worth it?

Will it be filled with further heartbreak?

That is the gift of the future.

If I watched my life in replay, what would I see? Which parts would I focus on, now?

I hope it's a long replay. I hope it's full of it all.

- Nicole xx