Jumble Box

Foolishness is missing things I can't have and that were never really mine anyway.  Foolishness is yearning for feathers to fly away, worse yet, for that little tilt of his lips that meant things were about to get interesting. Foolishness is sitting still when every instinct is screaming at me to run, to move, to do something, anything, else.....

I'm lost in the maze of memory, lost in those pieces of the past I rarely pull out anymore.  They don't have the sharp edges that they used to; my heart doesn't bleed to look at them now.  There are so many things I wish I'd done though....

I wish I'd never settled for his friendship.  I wish I'd never said that would be enough because, really, it never was.  I wish I'd just cut my losses and moved on since he never felt the same way about me.  Even though it would have cost me all those days, all those nights, all those memories, all those car rides, all those songs, all those hugs, I think I also missed some important things along the way while I was waiting for something I knew was never going to happen.  I wish, one late night when he came over to the apartment to sit too close on the couch and stare too long, I'd just told him that I couldn't do it anymore. 

I wish I'd had the skill to gut the other one with my shinai. I wish we'd come from sonkyo to face each other, and once, just once, I'd tagged his men hard enough to snap his head back, brutality and lack of control in the strike or no.  I wish I'd walked away from him that night I sat on the stairs after practice like some latter-day Juliet while he stood below and we talked.  No matter what connection sizzled when I first saw him.  I know what it is to be a fool; I earned every bell on my jingling hat with him.  I like to think I learned something from all of that, learned not to trust that sudden rush of the heart.  It's wonderful for poetry, but absolute hell on the soul.

There are other things, chances I didn't take, conversations I almost had.  Mostly, I feel as though somehow all the chances are gone, that all the sand has fallen into the bottom of my hourglass without my realizing that it was passing.  I wish that I could look up tomorrow and feel that stir of emotions, of hope and hopefulness again, of potential.  It's hard here.  I know I make it harder on myself.  I don't trust easily, am suspicious and look for the hidden knife when probably there is none, and my interests are not compatible with most people's apparently.

It would just be nice to have some bright good thing to put in this box instead of these shadowy broken-cornered regrets.  I think it's going to take someone very, very determined and patient to help me get out of this, and I don't know if that person even exists.  It may be too much to ask of anyone.