Unrequited Love

I’m hopelessly in love with my best friend.

Back then, my life was a song

With the bright music that reminds you of your youth

The one that screams “I’m wild! I’m free!”

Like doves we stuck together

Like ying and yang we were complete opposites

But somehow always seemed to fit.

Like the moon and the stars,

We were works of art.

And yes the moon had suitors but everyone must have known

That I was just one rock

In comparison to a billion suns.

My words a jester’s nonsense

To her majestic poetry.

My maturity that of a child

But she held the stature of a queen.

My heart an open box

Hers a hidden treasure chest.

With her by my side, the world was new.

I had someone to sing with.

College isn’t just a new song.

It’s a new genre,

A new atmosphere.

It’s instruments that I’ve never heard before

And voices of complete strangers.

Upon separation, we cried together.

We talked as often as best friends do,

She says, “I hate it here. I miss you.”

And together we count down the days until Christmas.

Our flipped hourglass recording the seconds

As we scratch the number of days into the walls with our fingernails

But somehow we still have the strength to write a To-Do list

Because, sure, I hate Utah,

But it seemed a little more bearable thinking

Of all the things we would get to do together.

She was that familiar song that

Reminded me of home.

Winter came and brought with it the cold and the silence.

The messages disappeared

The calls became a rare occurrence.

The music transformed into a

Mournful piano piece in the distance.

And college, college is walking the busy streets of New York by yourself.

Unbearably surrounded but completely isolated.

I’m alone in Utah with no one to call me “friend”

And I realize that I am waiting for someone like her

But you see, there is no one else like her

And she has already met someone new.

She’s got a new friend now and that’s OK.

“She’s adorable” she says.

“I don’t know how I’d survive college without her.”

I’m still alone but she still says “I miss you”

And I still love her and that’s ok.

While in the air, all I could think of was her.

I saw her in the clouds and in the sky

And in everything beautiful on the earth.

I heard the wind whisper,

“Everything will be ok once you’re together.”

It was the same thing that I had whispered to myself in the weeks prior.

Upon landing that plane,

My Christmas Eve gift to myself was a drive to her house.

“She isn’t here.

She is out with a boy.”

She didn’t ask me to see her again until December 31.

I know that date because it was the day my heart broke-

The day that she looked me in the eyes and said,

“No one has ever understood me like he does.

No one has ever cared for me like him.”

I’m surprised she didn’t hear my heart break.

To me the sound was deafening,

The sound of my quivering heartstrings

Of the symphony playing that tragically beautiful song,

The song that reminds us of the ones we’ve lost,

The song that no one wants to listen to,

But no one wants to forget.

How stupid of me to think that everything would be ok,

Because I was just one cold rock

And she was the life of a million solar systems.

I’m back in Utah now and this poem was incredibly hard to write

I hate to beat a dead horse,

But I feel like that overly played song on the radio.

The one that no one seems to like

But everyone is caught singing.

Constantly living in fear of meeting someone as she has

Constantly living in fear of repeating the last mistake.

But if our God really is “all merciful”

Then why is a mistake such a feared thing?

I hate to sound like that hymn you sing every Sunday

But whether you’re religious or not,

Can we all agree on one thing?

That no one is perfect?

I know that I should tell you,

“Don’t be afraid to love.

Don’t be afraid to sing.

Don’t be afraid of mistakes.”

But I won’t.

Because now I have become that horribly cliché poet

Singing that overly played song

Titled “Unrequited Love.”