cora kyler
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

on a greyhoud bus I tried to write to you.

I tried to tell you to go away but I never finished — I think I only really wrote your name followed by “I’m sorry.”

I moved my bed, my dresser, my desk, the chair, those paintings and you came and looked at me for the first time — I think — as if the way my bed inelegantly sat in the middle of the room and the desk nestled in that peculair alcove somehow told you all you needed to know. We’d carry on as if everything was perfectly and completely fine. As if it had always been fine.

And even though it wasn’t and it isn’t always you’d walk with me, see a stupid movie, drink lukewarm water and cheap beer. Loving not intensely but latently doing not much at all — being aflot. Rebuilding a ship plank by plank while still being afloat.

Numbers and algorithms I don’t quite understand, or roads, you know roads really throw me off. It seems they all exist in front, atop, a backdrop of infintude. And sure, there is physics and there are theories to graft upon the near inexlicable. But can’t we just be struck in awe of scale.

I’m not going to be the asshole who likens the human experience to sitting and peering over a ledge. I know you hate your feet dangling. But you can’t build a bed without worrying about how it’s going to come apart, and I stick my bed in the center of the room and call it change. We both pretend to be untouched — unscathed. I’m sorry I always lose my keys, I’m sorry I always say “sorry” and I’m sorry that when you say “it’s okay” I get frustrated because the whole time I knew it was just fine.

I learned to love patterns with you — the way you order the same thing at the same place because well, it’s good. I’ve often been sure there must be plenty out there that’s much better. But patterns, they’re tantalizing, referencing various knowns, coming back — over and over again because well, it feels good each time.

And yeah, sometimes it’s lukewarm or muted grey but I stopped writing on that bus that day and somewhere between there and now, we both decided in little mundane ways over and over again, to just stay.