She was an exquisite kind of fine. The kind of beautiful that makes you look and never break your stare. You wouldn’t care who was watching. But it wasn’t her features that grabbed my attention as I stared at her across the overfilled train. It was the small gold hamsa that hung daintily from her wrist. It initiated our conversation. And me asking for her accompaniment to my favorite restaurant in the West Village on 8^th Ave. And her saying yes while she blushed beneath her perfectly applied make up. Mac. I could tell. It ended with me asking for her number, and her writing the combination of digits on a piece of bright yellow, unlined paper with a baby pink pen in blue ink. She purposely held my hand a little longer than she needed to. I didn’t mind at all.

After our fated encounter, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was it. Everything that I felt like I was missing. And not because I had some repressed fantasy to be with someone that was just like me. Not because I was bi-curious and was using this as an opportunity to find out how it really was to be with one of the same. I had been with many like me before, and many different than me as well. But she had a shyness that rendered her seemingly defenseless. And a ferocity that threatened to swallow me whole if I wasn’t careful.

And consume me she did. After our date to the dimly lit restaurant in the city. After the movie in Queens. After shopping and dinner in Long Island and late night personal sessions in Brooklyn. Those were my favorite. Her always wearing her Hello Kitty boy shorts. Her perfect mix of innocence and enticement. The epitome of her. The embodiment of everything that was so necessary for me during that time and in that space.

But as much as I loved my one in the same, I was that much ashamed of her. Not wanting her to hold my hand in public. Failing to reciprocate her perfectly placed, affectionate kisses in front of our friends. They all were aware. But I was too reluctant to demonstrate what they already knew. I was not her same lover, her same friend, her same partner when her four walls weren’t surrounding us. I cowered in fear when we weren’t protected by the privacy of closed doors and pulled blinds.

Eventually she grew tired of me. Her exceptional kind of fine turned into something I didn’t know how to handle. Into ignored phone calls. Into being stood up. Into boring days and excruciatingly lonely nights. Into a feeling I didn’t think could come from one of the same. Feelings I had reserved for those that were different. But relationships are not so different when the two people involved share the same softness. The same desires. The same vulnerabilities. The same hopes that it wouldn’t end as it always did this time.

She needed me to be different. She needed something constant. Something invariable. A person that was unchanging when she woke up cuddled against them in the morning and when she fell asleep in their arms at night. That would prove to her that not everyone was out to cause her anguish. She needed confirmation. The exception. Her salvation. But I disappointed her. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Because when she needed me to be different, I was more of the same. 

I don’t know why I agreed to meet her in this place. The uneasy corner of Getting Over Her For Good and Trying To Make This Shit Work Again. She conned me into coming when she told me she needed to talk. Just as friends. She needed to vent. And I was the first person to come to her mind. Not her girlfriends. Not that dude she had just broken up with because they couldn’t iron out their kinks. But me. I pretended she was telling the truth about this being a friendly reunion. The love for her that still lived behind my conscious thoughts hoped it would be something more.

I reached the coordinates in space and time that she had given me. Not a tangible place that you can feel and touch, just a point in the universe where both of our beings wanted what they wanted. And at that moment, it was critical that we be with each other. Her body was so far away, but I could still see her in my mind’s eye. She was smiling shyly at me in my imagination, hoping I would make the first move so that time would revert back to when we were together. Before she lost her damn mind. She wanted to take a trip back to our favorite place. Where it was quiet. Where we didn’t have to utter a single word to communicate. Where I gave her the truest, purest form of me.

But she hadn’t known what to do with my vulnerability. It had been fragile and needed to be handled with care. I had given it all to her, and ultimately, had to take it all back. Or at least what was left of it before she destroyed all of its magnificence. That’s the thing about beautiful emotions. They’re so precious, so incredible, you never want to let them go. You want to keep them pressed against the softest parts of you forever. But she didn’t deserve any of it. She wasn’t worthy of my sensitivity.

But I damn sure wanted to bestow the honor upon her once again. I wanted to start over. I wanted us to hit replay and rewrite the parts where she fucked it all up. Make her choose differently. Demand that she see that everything she was looking for in these shallow ass niggas she was using to fill that emptiness was already in me. I wanted to hear her voice again and be hypnotized by her Siren Song. Remind me of the times that she made me feel ecstasy despite the crumbling walls of hell all around us. Take me to before I knew that she was the devil I was running from.

I still wanted to save her from herself. I wanted to run behind her and tell her that she was flawless just as she was. She didn’t need to run away from her insecurities. Her fears no longer needed to cripple her. She was perfect. She still is already perfect. There was no need to destroy everything she touched just because she herself was broken. I wanted nothing more than to fix her. I wanted to take her bruised existence and nurse it back to health. She was worth more than the Rolex I displayed on my wrist. She was worth more than one hundred lifetimes. She was worth more than I could ever offer her. We just needed one eternity together.

I guess that’s why I agreed to meet her at the corner of I Shouldn’t Be Here and I’ll Never Fucking Leave Your Side. Because no matter what direction we take, we would always end up here. Staring at each despite the limitations of time and space. Aware of the fact that we should never try to awaken the sleeping dragon that was once us. But pathetically unable to fight the feeling that this is where we both belonged. There was no place I’d rather be than on the corner of I’m Leaving You Alone and You’ll Always Be My Baby with her.

I was not searching for you when I put on my black maxi, fitted around my waist, gold collar around the neckline. I simply adored how it glittered in the sunlight. I loved how the detailing glowed perfectly against my melanin kissed skin.

I was not thinking about you when I put on my favorite diamond ear rings and pulled my hair into an immaculate school teacher bun. I just thought a lady only lets her husband see her with her hair down. It should be something reserved exclusively for him. The rest of humanity is only worthy of hair pulled up, tucked away, and pinned to perfection. Call me old fashioned.

I couldn’t have cared less about you when I made up my mind to wear my favorite pair of black Steve Madden wedges, gold buckles shining on the sides. I let my femininity devour me as I slipped my perfectly pedicured feet into that beautifully crafted shoe. I was just taking a moment to appreciate how amazing it felt to truly be all dolled up.

I had others on my mind when I set out to run my errands, clearly over dressed and underestimated. The silly little play things that engaged in the cat calling and hand grabbing as I walked past were simply not aware that I could rip their throats out without ever laying a hand on their pretty little heads. I was just sophisticated like that. I didn’t care about your existence because I was too wrapped up in being admired. Being coveted. Being wanted.

I, in my ignorance and self-centered unawareness, did not notice that my forever had been watching me, studying my arrogant gait. As I pretended to be consumed with the nothingness around me, I was oblivious to the fact that you were following me with the most sacred places of your heart. And the most wicked places of your imagination. I did not even deem you worthy enough for my glance. Your dirt stained hands, your oil filled shirt. Your thick, sweaty brown. My mysticism was too great for you. You were not even worthy of my gaze.

It’s funny how sometimes to find exactly what we’re looking for, we simply have to take our eyes off the ground and look up. And that I did. And there you were. And suddenly, someone that I had not even thought to acknowledge, a person that was invisible for all the moments that we had been standing in that place together, a person that longed for me even though I did not care who they were in this lifetime or who they will be in the next, this person had suddenly become the most important person in my entire life.

And he’s still here. Adoring me. Kissing me. Making me laugh. Filling me with the best parts of him and taking away the worst parts of me. He’s still here loving my pretty dresses and heels too high for me to walk it. My made up face and my perfectly manicured nails. He’s still here adulating me. Especially when I’m all dolled up. What a wonderful man.