How I Will Remember You

All the places we could have landed

Everything we could have been

Depending on one single choice

Crazy, isn't it?

I could still be living in New York

I could still be living in New Jersey

I could be going to a different high school instead of this one.

I might not be playing chess

I might not have joined that club

I might not have ever known of your existence 

I could be a completely different person.

So could you.

But, Zach, I moved out of New York thirteen years ago.

I moved out of New Jersey two years ago. 

I moved to Pennsylvania, on this wide road lined with humble trees, zoned for this specific high school

In the center of a rich town with rich kids living in houses with more space than you know what to do with

It was two years ago when my path crossed yours

I stepped into room 319 and I sat in that blue spinning chair in Mr. Block's small classroom on the top floor of that recently built high school watching the battle between good vs. evil unfold before my eyes

And I met you, sitting right there across from me.

My path led me right to the boy with the messy brown hair and beautifully curious eyes

Zach, I met you in that cozy room filled with chess pieces and nerdy seniors in a crowded school with puppets on strings dancing on the fields outside.

I met you. And I fell for you.

I fell hard for you. Not anyone else.

It was only you.

And you reciprocated everything.

Every feeling, every thought.

We understood each other

It was the kind of thing I only saw in movies, only dreamed about in my wildest fantasies

Your lips poisoned mine for the first time in the basement of your mother's house

As a small black cat danced between our legs and your brother's music blasted from upstairs

Sending vibrations throughout that small brown house with rusty windows on the corner of where two little streets intersected for a moment

Now, I hold the pieces of my heart in shaking hands and wonder how it all went so wrong so quickly

I can't go back and I can't change anything.

I know that.

To be honest, I don't know if I would even want to alter our story.

I wouldn't know what to change

Where we even went wrong.

What moment did we lose each other?

What happened, Zach?

What happened to us?

Maybe there is a reason to all of this chaos.

Maybe I will look back someday and realize why everything had to happen the way it did.

Why I met you and I fell in love with you. 

Why you fell in love with me.

It was a cliche 

Bad boy meets good girl

Sparks fly and two bodies lay on the hood of a beat up car in front of a small park at 3 a.m. eating chocolate chip cookies

And that's where I want to leave our story.

I wish that moment could have lasted forever

Why does time only move forward?

Forget the drama 

Forget the fighting

Forget the breakup

Forget the time I stormed out of your car while you whispered my name, while you whispered that you love me

Forget the time I slammed your car door, not realizing that it would be the last time I ever saw your face

Forget the small wooden box buried six feet underground.

That's not where you belong, that's not where you are.

You aren't dead.

I won't believe that. 

It's not real and it never will be.

You are not dead

You did not pull the trigger

You did not destroy everything you could have had, everything you could have been, everywhere you could have landed

You are here

You are cuddling in my bed with me, you are grabbing my hand in the middle of a crowded city and dancing to the faded music in the middle of love park

You are pulling your car into my driveway, I am sneaking out the back staircase, and you are stepping on the gas as we drive through a frozen neighborhood at 2 a.m. 

I can feel it

I can feel you.

Am I crazy?

Your feet should be dancing on the soft earth

Not six feet below it.

In my mind, you are still in my backyard, thunder exploding in the dark sky

Your car was broken, you had just biked four miles at midnight in the pouring rain to be with me

To kiss me goodbye before we parted ways for the summer

Your arms wrapped around me, our legs intertwined

Your lips on mine 

Your body on my body on that hammock as the rain pours and lightning illuminates the midnight sky

That's how I will remember you 

I will always love you.