Did I Remember to Tell You I Adore You?

Here’s what I remember.

Do nothing till you hear from me. Pay no attention to what’s said. Why people tear the seam of anyone’s dream is over my head.

You needed to wash your glasses, but I couldn’t look at you without glasses, so I had to leave the room.

Brown lashes, eyes blue and green, like in the song, and little wrinkles in the far corners, and freckles, just teeny-tiny ones, on the lower lids, and how perfectly almond-shaped your eyes are. Little golden spots in the irises, making your blue and green eyes appear like a magician’s eyes.

But the beauty of the eyes aside, it was the undiluted emotion in those eyes, I could not handle just then.

No one looked at me the way you do. It is a feeling I sometimes cannot quite grasp. That look collapses me, and I have a moment of utter terror, thinking of all the things I have said to you, and how you, if you thought about it, have no reason at all to be looking at me like that, with that blinding, all-consuming love.

Unmasked, your face is a much younger man’s face, and the eyes, bare and soulful, kind, even, so surprising, because you can be so cold and tempestuous when you are mad at me.

Without your glasses, I can sometimes see the little boy you once were.

Will there be a time when you won’t want to look at me anymore?

I have given you ample reason.

(Today I made my famous pancake and you weren’t here to compliment it. I only made it so that the smell would maybe reach you, and I ate it alone, even if it wasn’t for eating alone, but always with a loved one. Now perhaps I jinxed the future pancakes to burn, or taste like paper. Do you love me still, although I made my famous pancake without you?)

Lover man, oh, where can you be?

The look of love. I didn’t understand what it meant before.

An ocean of love.

One can get lost there. I got lost there, once.

You go to my head, you linger like a haunting refrain. And I find you spinning round in my brain like the bubbles in a glass of champagne.

You say I am like your dog, always sniffing you. Yes. It is true. I am your dog. I love smelling your skin. Being your dog is the best thing I can think of, knowing that you, too, are a dog person.

You are my dog, too. You know this. I have whispered you my own, ages ago.

I sometimes have to leave when you take off your glasses, because otherwise the feeling will undo me, and I cannot be undone all the time.

A tinkling piano in the next apartment, those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant. A fairground's painted swings. These foolish things remind me of you.

Like when you are driving and I am on the passenger seat, and I see your hand on the gear shift, I have to look away, look at the changing scenery, because otherwise, I might start crying.

I have never before felt this way. I was always able to look them in the eye. To look at them. To call them by their names.

I can only circle around you, orbit near you. Hearing you speak can break me, too, so I have to brace myself all the time. You think I am bored, that I am angry with you, that I want you to stop, to get out.

I don’t.

That one time in May, it wasn’t because you said something hurtful to me. It was the feeling, and I was unable to bring myself to explain.

I never tell you this, but that look, your face and your eyes, with the surprisingly soft and long lashes the color of an old leather case, is your strongest claim on me.

If you can keep me, I want to stay with you forever, and I’ll be glad.

You are a cautious man, an arrogant man, a self-centered man, a vulnerable man, a sensitive man. You are the man I love.

You hurt me.

I hurt you.

You call me names.

I call you worse names.

You say you love me.

I sometimes tell you I love you.

It isn’t that I don’t love you when I don’t say it.

I love you so much I have trouble breathing.

My heart just stopped when I caught your eye.

The insides of my eyes start to trickle, and I feel like my toes are catching fire.

It is unbearable, sometimes.

I feel like if I spoke what I felt, the world would darken because I had used all the energy to try and say something that was impossible to utter.

With the greatest gift comes the greatest fear of losing that gift. But no one loves because the one they love deserves to be loved. Love doesn’t work that way.

I bask in the blinding light of your eyes, in how your face looks when you are looking at me, not thinking there might be an end to this basking, because I am terrible at happy endings, I never had one before, and this love affair is so difficult, we have left each other a thousand times, so I can no longer think about that, I just accept it for what it is.

Yes, we are so childish, we are such children.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato, let’s call the whole thing off.

If there ever was such an event, an end to your love, I would never want to look at you again.

Seeing you look at someone else the way you look at me. I would die first.

I get along without you very well, oh yes, I do, except perhaps in spring, but I should never think of spring, for that would surely break my heart in two.

But I would know you loved me once, with everything that you were. And it was grand. And I loved you back, so much I almost choked from the weight of that love.

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

The terrible love.

The massive, unapologetic love.

The love that was so bright I needed to avert my eyes, sometimes.

The love that made me feel like I was myself, finally.

For nobody else gave me a thrill, with all your faults, I love you still.

Because we met, I am now a writer.

You made me fulfill my life’s dream. 

The way you changed my life, oh no they can’t take that away from me.

No one ever gave me a greater gift.

You did not do it, I did it myself, but it happened because of you, because you told me what I had inside me was real, that it was a true gift, and depriving the world of that gift would be such a waste of living. It was your constant support and relentless praise that convinced me to throw myself out there.

I am doing what I love because you kept telling me I could. That I just needed to take a chance on myself.

I am a happier person because of you. I know you’ll never believe it, because I cry so much when you are around.

You have had an effect on my life.

Even with the best people around, one can make that statement about only a handful of others in one’s lifetime.

I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places, and this heart of mine embraces all day and through. In that small café, the park across the way, the children’s carousel, the chestnut trees, the wishing well. I’ll be seeing you in every lovely summer’s day, in everything that’s light and gay. I’ll always think of you that way.

This story was written with the gracious help from Lady Day; Ms. Billie Holiday. All words in italics are from the songs she sang during our melancholy afternoon of missing you. Also, a bit of help from Bill Evans, and The National.