Once, I asked you:
If you could be any of the four classical elements,
which would you be?
And you said:
Air--"because you can't see me,
but you can feel me."
Sometimes you ask me if during all of those missing years
I thought of you--
Or spoke of you--
Or thought of speaking of you--
And often I say,
"Well, no."
Then I sense your disappointment hovering thick in the air.
You don't say it--
But I can feel it.
Sweetie, it's so classic, your bad sense of timing.
You ask at all the wrong moments.
So if you wonder whether or not you still meant anything to me beyond a nearly vacant memory,
If you sense that I suffered some self-inflicted amnesia, circumventing the sting of things better forgotten,
If the question is did you ever cross my mind,
The answer is:
Every time I saw a Dodge Charger of any vintage;
Every time I heard Brooks and Dunn sing "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone";
Every time I pulled my Literature 201 textbook from the shelf;
Every time a vacuum cleaner bag needed changing;
Every time I saw you as an old man in the movie UP;
Every time I saw you in the movie American Beauty, eyes tearing up as you tried to explain the grace you found in something so mundane as a plastic bag dancing in the wind;
Every time I drove past the building where we sat on the roof and watched the sun rise;
Every time I drove past the Fremont exit on the Ohio Turnpike;
Every time I drove past the place where I first kissed you;
And every time I searched your name on the Internet, only to locate some long deceased Ohio governor instead.
So if you wonder if I forgot you--
I couldn't see you.
I couldn't hear you.
And I couldn't find you.
But I could always feel you.
