When You Call It Love

I haven’t written since you

and I realize that exact line has likely been written before

and I know I’m not alone.

But I am alone.

Because no one else is me and no one else is you.

And no one else knows the us we know.

And maybe I have written, but it’s been no good.

And some say what I wrote about you is my best yet.

You know what?

They’re correct.

I’d be lying if I said I don’t want to go back to that night.

Talking for hours in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Somewhere you may never visit again.

And we laughed and cried and you drew in my notebook.

Nobody draws in my notebook.

That’s for the things my heart wants to keep while my mind lets go.

And now you’re in there.

We talked later than we ought to have.

But I wouldn’t trade any amount of rest for our time together.

We hardly touched except for one wonderful hug.

That embrace where I literally swept you off your feet,

and I knew you could feel it.

It was that intimacy we longed for,

but it wasn’t ours to keep.

I haven’t felt anything quite like it since then.

Just as I haven’t written anything like it since then.

My heart hasn’t beat and stomach hasn’t floated like that since then.

And since then, since you told me not to interact with you,

and yeah, I’ve hurt, but I respected it.

You needed the space, didn’t you?

I think you did. You wouldn’t have told me you did unless it was true.

It was true.

And I don’t hold it against you.

But I don’t know if I want it back.

I mean, I know I do.

But I don’t. Because nothing will ever be like it again, and that’s good.

Nothing will be like it because we aren’t even who we were.

And if I haven’t written like that since then,

and if I haven’t felt anything like that since then,

and if I haven’t been the same since then…

Is that when you call it Love?