I remember a bus stop.

I can picture it- seven years later.

It was cold, so it must have been fall.

I remember your little bounce- you were cold. Already wearing a hoodie, so I couldnt offer mine.

I remember the glint of your teeth off the stop lights. Driving felt so far away then, waiting for the bus.

I remember your laugh on the wind- sharp, deep and cutting. I felt my own lips turn. I remember it was a tie between a grin and a frown-

because I could not openly love you then. And I was too sick to know how, anyway.

But nobody knew- not how I kept you sacredly to my chest. Not my quiet murmuring of worship. They didn't know the same altar I prayed at for your love that they prayed for your salvation. Or mine. Who knows?

Seven years. So many hours lost to thinking of you. So many poems. An entire book.

So, I know. I don't know you now, just as you don't me as must as you like to think you do from what I heard of you saying about me.

Despite it, I love you. Or maybe I love late, cold nights at a bus stop,

and awkward fumbling and hidden, anxious kisses.

I smile and swallow bitterly until im worried my face will stick like that.

And then I know it isn't true.

If soulmates exist, it is you. Because I cannot be rid of you though I try.

I don't remember your smell, or your touch, but I remember you.

I remember it all.

I look around me. Towering above are my "friends" of old, now content among themselves without me. I remember when we used to be equals, when I used to compete with them for the highest and used to shine above them.

Now I am with a herd not my own, whose statures were below mine and whose manes did not shine as bright as mine. But now I am just as tall as they. They have grown while I have not. My mane is dampened with clay so as not to shine at all. I am now one of them, though their hooves will never thud to the same rhythm as mine, and my colors will never truly match theirs.

I belong to the older herd, whose time on this earth have made them wiser and higher and made their manes shine brighter. I am one of them, yet I am not as tall as they. I have lost the spark that made me glow and lost the time that would have made me grow. I am not one of them. I am now an outcast.

Here I am on the other side,

Looking ’cross this vast chasm in your direction,

My view clouded by darkness and dust.

I can’t see your face.

I can’t see whether you’re looking back at me

Or looking away, your back to my face.

And when you look this way,

I can’t tell whether you are pleased or disgusted,

Or whether you are indifferent.

Here I am standing alone

On the other side of this vast chasm

While you, for all I can see, are surrounded by a sea of joys

And maybe even bountiful reservoirs of slender fish.

Here I am alone and sinking in my own sea

While you – and this I was able to glimpse –

Are blazing heartily through and above the waters,

Without a thought of worry or doubt.

Here I am, watching your tracks

Which seem to push me away,

And I wonder whether you’re trying to

Or are merely compelled to.

And I wonder whether your side still has a heart for me

Or whether I am a pest in your eyes.

Yet here I am, still waiting.

Waiting for the day you might turn around and look at me

Waiting for the day when you might break through the gorge

And touch me.

Waiting for that promise that it seems may never come.