I Could Never Call Loving You A Waste

I think about you when the sun has barely risen and I’m guiding my bike  along these quiet streets. The clouds are still hanging low in the sky, the birds are silent, and the trees are holding their breath, waiting for the first signs of life.
This is when I miss you the most. I wonder where you are, who you’re with, if you’re thousands of galaxies and worlds and decisions away from me, not missing me at all.
Sometimes I wonder if we were a mistake. If you meant what you said when you carved those three words into my soul, into the ribbons of my mind, into the protective rib cage around my heart. Your ‘I love yous’ kept me safe, grounded. Now I wonder if they carried any weight, or if they were just words spoken to the air, dissolving like morning dew.
But you were my adventure. You were my Friday nights, my cross-country trips, my pounding heart, my spark. You were my escape. My Saturday mornings, my afternoons on the roof, my dinners and movies and forehead kisses. You were my laughter, my challenge, my hope, my person. And no matter what I tell myself when the morning is dark and silent, I loved you.
I loved you. And so we were never, could never be a mistake, a waste, days and months and years of lost time. I could never see us like that.
No matter what I tell myself when the morning is dark and silent, I loved you.
You were arms that held me, a mind that built me, a voice that challenged me. You were the one I grew alongside, I trusted, and I knew more than anyone. Regardless of heartbreak and pain and change and circumstance, that counts for something. Always will.
And so it’s morning, and my eyes are sleepy, my mind wandering. The houses along this road are shadowed, porch lights like signals calling wandering husbands and wives home.
In the rear view mirror, I see the quiet yards, the grass dark and grey. I see the beads of dew that will melt with the morning sun.
And I see my eyes reflected back to me, bright and clear.