Morning light

Riding home in the purple light, the air is warmer than I expected, and smoother somehow, easier to breathe.  Everything that is not the sky is just a dark shadow cast against it, a silhouette they call it, and I wonder that word means.  What words mean.
I think about how silly palm trees will always look to me, like they do not belong.  I will never really get used to them.
And maybe I am just that sort of person, who will never get used to palm trees, who wonders what words mean.  Maybe I am the sort of person that will never get used to things.  So that waking up with a hand in mine is always a welcome surprise.

I think about how I never got used to you, about how I learned about certain words when I met you.
I think about how when I said I loved you I felt the earth drop from under me, about how I couldn't stand to say it with my glasses on and I remember the world being blurry and that seeming appropriate. I remember how it scared me shitless, because it was true, and it was so so stupid, and I couldn't control it.  Because I learned what those words mean in that moment.
I think about how you told me that love felt like taking someone's heart and stitching it together with your own, and I remember wondering how you could do that without that someone's consent.
I think about how those words mean so much more to me now, because I know what they mean.  I think about how I never get used to them.
I remember sitting on opposite sides of the couch and you telling me that you felt like you were in a movie.  I remember you telling me, in all our incredible naïve glory, that we could still be friends, and I remember choking back tears and saying the only honest words I had.  "I don't want to be your friend." I remember learning what the word "heartbroken" means.  I think about how I never got used to it until there was no other option, about how it felt like a surprise every morning that I could still exist.

I think about this riding home in the purple light, and I think about how you are just a shadow against this morning sky now.  I know your silhouette and nothing else.  I remember the days I would have stuck around until sunrise to watch your features fill in slowly with the light coming in through the palm fronds.  I think about those days, remembering them fondly as a sort of silly thing I took very seriously once, as I walk inside.

I think about how these things are still important to me, but you are not.  You are the subject of a story whose plot is the thing that really matters.  And if I were asked about the story, I would not begin to say that "it is a story about someone who..."  I would begin with the point of the whole thing, that it is a story about learning.  It is a story about the meaning of words and being amazed by palm trees.  As often as you are mentioned, it is not a story about you.

I guess I know how all this sounds, and I guess I'm okay with that.  Because I'm that girl sometimes, who think about the past and gets emotional before the sun is up and writes cathartic blog posts instead of doing work.