Forget Her Not

“I’m looking for someone to help me make a mess of the kitchen that we don’t clean up for days and to yell at for not doing anything wrong when I just need to go off on someone. I don’t need someone to tell me I’m crazy for obsessively rearranging the furniture every month. I don’t need someone to hold me at night or fix the leaky faucet. I don’t need to be taken care of, I don’t want to be taken care of. I’m looking for a business partner, a wall to bounce ideas off of, and a strong pair of hands to help me move the couch to the other side of the room so I can decide I liked it better where it was originally. I want a friend I can talk to. Someone to laugh at me when I trip over myself and fall on my ass, and maybe, just once or twice, to help me up off the ground. I don’t need roses or diamonds or any romantic shit. I just need to die knowing one person in the entire world knew all of my flaws and all of my secrets and loved me anyway.”

I wrote that two years ago.

Our best conversations begin with, “Okay, truth time,” and “Can I run an idea by you?”. He teaches me things about space and light and earth and life. I take it out on him when I’m frustrated, sad, and scared, and he takes it all and knows that all I need is a good laugh and little time. He confides in me. He listens to me. He asks me about myself, and better yet, remembers my answers. Every day I learn something new about him, and every day, I like him more. Our frailties, our imperfections, and abnormalities, our quarks, we’re learning them all - and we’re not just able to look past them, but we’re embracing them, talking about them, loving them. I’m learning things about the world that I didn’t know were out there, and things about myself that I didn’t know were in there.

He’s my other half. He’s my colleague. He’s my side-kick. He’s my best friend. He’s my everything. All I can hope for is to somehow be to him what he is to me.

He has her spending half her days wondering
when he’s going to come around,
and the other half wondering
where he goes after he walks out.

He hates her because she’s got confidence that he calls cockiness. He hates her because she speaks up, because she says what she thinks instead of what she thinks he wants to hear. He hates her because she isn’t afraid to admit when she doesn’t understand, and he just plays along. He hates her because she answers his questions honestly, even when a lie would have been more convenient. He hates her for not being modest. He hates her for not being embarrassed. He hates her because she takes charge when no one else will. He hates her because she spoke to him while he was still trying to find the right time to say hello. He hates her because she refuses to pretend she’s stupid. He hates her, because she acts just as smart as she is, and he thinks,

“Who is she to be so bold?”

It’s fitting that he hates her, because he doesn’t deserve to love her.