If It Means A Lot To You

Dear An-na-b-elle Jo-nes,
I love you. My story is one of a boy who could find infinite beauty in any little thing; your story is one of a girl who couldn’t. It’s true you loved to collect beautiful things: paintings, sketches, sculptures, books, leaves, pressed flowers, black and white photographs, glass bottles, driftwood, quotes, last words, butterflies and so many other things. You thought beautiful things made you more interesting, you were wrong, Anna. You were all I ever needed. I find myself wishing you would have been a collector of life, stealing all its moments and putting them in a collage that would hang on the wall of your heart. You could have looked at it every day and learned that it too was a beautiful thing. I could have made you love it, in time. In time, two words, I and you, could have, should have become I love you. I like to think that you wanted to collect life, so you put in a jar beside your bed, on the windowsill, so it would soak up the sun and energy, build up its strength. Every day you would water it, speaking to it like you would speak to me and it would grow and thrive. One day however, July 7th 2007, you walked into your room and the jar was smashed, a million little cosmos, your universe, lay in shards on the hardwood floor, a million little inarticulate “loves” all dead. Under your care, the life inside the jar had grown too big to be contained and had escaped from the confines of glass. I like to think that you tried to fix it but found that you just couldn’t. Why didn’t I tell you that life doesn’t belong in a jar? It was this that made you, it was this that made you, it was this that made you jump-wasn’t it? Your collection of life was greater than life itself and you couldn’t handle it. So you jumped off the most beautiful pier into the turbulent waters below. It was storming that day Anna, there was lightening. Did a bolt shock the water as you plunged deeper and deeper- illuminating your raven hair with an eerie glow? Why didn’t you come up for air? Maybe the waves were too strong and you just couldn’t. You never said goodbye and you took away my ability to ever say goodbye again. I am not sorry for you, I am sorry for me. You were so selfish and inconsiderate and enchanting and I loved you anyways- why wasn’t that enough? I gave you so much; I tried to make myself enough. I would have put your jar back together, I would have stitched it together with good intentions, with iron wires I would have sewn, with strings of love, with complementary cords of grace and goodness; I would have cut my hands on sharp glass edges gladly. All for you, Anna; everything for you- at what point did you do things out of blind love for me? I just want to see you and touch you and hear you, just be near you for another day, week, month, year, decade, five decades, one hundred years. One day, one more fucking day, you could have waited, you could have committed your first and only act of love, done something you hated for me but you didn’t because you weren’t that person. That night when you learned life was either too big or too small, we had just come back from the beach; you always loved watching the storms roll in, so we lay on our backs and watched the darkness approach. We had gazed at the pier in the distance; you were particularly taken by it, taking picture after picture- you were always the photographer and never the one photographed. We drove home in the pouring rain and as I pulled up to your house, you leaned into me, pressing your lithe frame against mine (I can still feel it; your final imprint) and you kissed me, pulled a veil over my eyes with your kisses, you whispered, “Happy Birthday” into my ear. I was twenty two. You kissed me for a very long time; pausing to look into my eyes, touch my face, inhale the scent of my neck, flutter your eyelashes along my temple. I should have known what goodbye tasted like. You squeezed my hands and got out of the car. I could hear you singing “Yesterday.” I waited until you unlocked your door and you turned around once you were inside; god, it was dark in there and your last gesture was lost into the labyrinth of your home. Did you blow a kiss? Wink? Let tears fall? Why did I miss that last moment of you- or did I just miss you completely?

Dominick