Just two strangers

You came up to me,
Hangin by the beach,
Asked to take my picture,
Like the universe needed a reason,
For us to collide.

One month.
That’s all it took,
For you to crawl under my skin,
And make a home of my every heartbeat.
We were inseparable,
Sunrise to long past midnight,
Each moment stitched together,
With laughter,
With wanting,
With that dizzy,
Early kind of love.

And then,
Just like that,
You vanished.
Switched it all off,
Like I was a light you no longer needed.
No anger, no explosion,
Just absence.
Like we were strangers,
Who had only passed,
On a street neither of us could find again.

You went far.
Three years of oceans,
Mountains,
Time zones,
And I stayed.
Not in place,
But in hope.
Always waiting for the day,
I could hold you again.
Not knowing,
If you even remembered my name.

And then,
You did.
We talked.
We laughed.
We healed the silence with soft words,
And slow visits.
Then one day,
Your toothbrush sat next to mine.
And love came back in full color.
You said “YES!”,
With a ring on your finger,
And I thought…
Maybe we’re done being strangers.

But love is fragile,
And I made mistakes.
Too much work.
Too little presence.
And you…
You started slipping away again,
Quietly,
At first.
Then I cast a final blow,
And you ended us.

That feeling again,
Silence,
While making coffee,
While folding laundry,
While hiding your eyes.
And I felt it,
That old cruel distance,
Returning like a storm I couldn’t stop.
Even your body forgot me.
You covered yourself,
Like I hadn’t kissed every inch,
A thousand times.

And now,
we are what we’ve always been.
Strangers.
Strangers who once danced barefoot
in the kitchen,
and whispered about forever.
Strangers who swore,
we’d never be.

But I see it now.
We were always strangers,
because no matter how close we pressed,
no matter how deep the love,
life is lived alone.
You can’t crawl into someone’s mind,
and stay.
You can only visit,
and hope they leave the door unlocked.

Still,
if the world spins us together again,
as it has before,
I will love you as a stranger,
without asking you to be anything else.
Because maybe,
that’s the only way,
love ever really lasts.