All Too Well (First Love version)

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.