You

Every day I speak with you I remember how much I gave up when I choose what I thought to be the easier path. I am reminded by the way you actively listen and appropriately and sensitively respond to what I don't know to be entirely comprehensive ramblings. I recall what I so consciously attempted to block out; the way you get my humor, the way you laugh and acknowledge my flaws as not flaws but instead part of the human condition, the way you were so kind and thoughtful without the expectation of recompense. You call me not to remind me, I think, but to be a friend in my time of need. You call to be a compassionate and understanding ear, and I can speak almost freely to you once again without having to consider what she would feel or think if she knew I was still sharing a bigger part of myself with you than I ever could with her. And it isn't as if I didn't try to let her see me, she just saw me differently, through the lens of what me being me might mean to her perhaps. She had stock in me and her investment, now pulled, leaves me lighter. I see this in the mirror when I contemplate the sight of my hip bones again, and I remember how your hands appreciated them when I had this body before the weight settled in. Three years of insulation melting off in a matter of weeks when I couldn't eat after she left. I feel this lightness in my thoughts as they drift past the boundaries of the day to day building a future that does not exist, that never could. I feel this in my chest, sometimes as emptiness and sometimes as pure gratitude that I am now only responsible for my self and my life, and not even that because I am filled with God and surrounded by God and part of that is the knowing that always existed that someday you and I would revisit what we had. I thought this re visitation might just be a coffee on a layover and maybe our hair would have silver lining and we would reminisce about when we had our affair many many years ago, before life unfolded in directions that we wouldn't have been able to predict back then. We could look at each other's aged faces and I would smile and you would have that serious look that made me smile even more and then you would break and smile too. We would know that it was still there, that connection, and we would honor it and acknowledge it and then go about our lives as they were, completely separate and experienced far far away from each other. That is how I thought it would happen.
I am arrogant to ever think it possible to predict any of this. I was delusional to believe with any part of myself that I could know she would be the safer choice. I am grateful that you live with your new girlfriend, who is not someone you can love like you loved me because she is not me and what we had was something of it's own, an alchemy instantly both explosive and perfectly congruous and I know you know that too. But I won't say any of this to you. I will just accept what you give with gratitude, and trust in faith that you are exactly where and what and with whom you are meant to be. All the while loving in my heart that you did not fade into the past.