Your name sits in my inbox among others, but to say it blends in would be lying. It sticks out like an inflamed thumb, the letters of your name creating a familiar shape I've rolled around my thoughts and notebooks for years. It's ebbed and flowed through dreams, expectations, truths and disappointments. Happiness and sadness. The whole shebang. It's sitting there, on this late summer night, and I'm itching to say everything I shouldn't. Wondering if you're sitting on the other side of the screen, typing out the words you wouldn't dare let escape from your backspace button. All I have are my assumptions, and my mind has already woven a library of what ifs and why nots.

         Say that we do eventually hang out. It will be late afternoon, sometime midweek. You're very busy and I'd never wish to impose on such a demanding schedule. You'll pick somewhere neutral, a coffeehouse perhaps. I'll suggest something more intimate, maybe a park or a hiking trail. We'll disagree and ultimately decide your idea is best, because secretly you'll know this leaves less opportunity for actual discussion and more space for the scripted social narrative. I'll arrive, unintentionally early like always. We'll dance through the familiar conversational topics, such as work and hobbies. From the outside, anyone would think we've known each other for years.

 Nothing strange or odd about this casual meeting whatsoever. 

On the inside, I'm screaming. If the nerves don't kill me, then nothing can. 

        Something seems off. Different. Time has made strangers of us both and long ago snapped the tether that kept us both from drifting apart. It's painful and it's apparent and to keep the agony of reality from spilling out and all over this coffee table is too much to take in this moment. It will be all over before it ever began. "You knew this was a mistake" you'll think, as you walk broken and defeated to your car. You'll crank it up and sit there for a minute, waiting. You don't know what you're waiting for. But you'll wait. 

And the only thing that comes will be the road ahead of you as you leave and drive away, once and for all and for good. 

 

            This is why your name is best kept in black in white, on the screen in front of me. Safe from the harsh reality that time and distance ultimately stains us all with. Safe from the memories and the forgotten details we long stored away, if we haven't forgotten them completely. Safe from the bitter nostalgia of what could have been. I'll meet you in my dreams, where you'll always live. Safe from the disappointments of my own impossible expectations. Perhaps in another life. 

Perhaps in another universe. Or perhaps never at all.