i’m by no means a romantic.  at best, i believe in love – only insofar as “it exists.”  mostly i believe in numbers and probability, and patterns, i suppose – so i don’t believe in actually finding it (though of course some must?), because what are the chances?  but 16-year-old me must have had some heart; she wrote this:

third try

last night as i drove home in the snow
from my new lover’s apartment (i never liked the word lover.
i started using it after we broke up the second time. you hate the word as much as i)
my mind drifted to memories i once wished i could erase
like our first snowball fight at the park i fell in love with
even before i knew you lived nearby.

God was screwing around this February
snow before President’s Day
rain on valentine’s and your last name
on the license plate in front of me. fucking hell, i never notice license plates

i shouldn’t have to justify why i almost called you last night
almost left a message and said i miss my life with you
but i kept following the license plate without meaning to until i
stopped matching speed and realized i’d forgotten where i was going.
your number is still ninth on speed dial, which only you know means you’re the most important
it’s my favorite number. i had to get off the highway and compose myself
before i finally remembered my boyfriend’s name. i asked him if he’d seen me recently
he sounded worried
i said i’d go back to his place.
the next thing i remember is turning the corner six blocks away from my building
and ringing your doorbell.

the two of us broke up because as friends, you made me deliriously happy
i’ll never forget the time you actually convinced me to make a snow angel
i got so sick that day and you made me this horrible chicken soup that
we ended up conning our friends into eating, just to try it
but i think that if there’s such a thing as two people meant to be
they only figure it out after going through some crazy-ass process of failures.

i say this with complete honesty and belief in the idea
because i woke up in your arms with the television you weren’t watching softly on ny1
i opened my eyes to page 97 of the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
which you were rereading over my shoulder. your head rested next to mine,
and we said at the same time
“Mark Haddon is a genius, isn’t he?”
“your hair smells nice.”
both were true. i’m going to call my (very soon-to-be) ex today, whose name still escapes me
and then i’m going to watch television on your sofa with your blanket in your pajamas.
mine are six blocks away and that is too far to travel when
our togetherness is once again this fragile.