A rare bird

 While I truly appreciated the compliment, I would be remiss to say I ever fully understood it. A rare bird. It was three or four times when you enunciated it in the most intimate conversations but geez. What the fuck does that really mean, man? And why did you constantly drum on about it? An improbable affection, but one I've nursed for a while now. Tender, if I ever had to choose a word for you and my emotions then project those across the Pacific Ocean.

Like a baby bird, mouth agape and barely breathing from the hunger and expectation of worms. That's how I felt. A breath of fresh air that didn't feel like one because my jaw was unhinged from screaming. Yet, there you were, soothing and calming and there.

Sure, it sounds dramatic but we met at very inopportune times. Personally, I was barely out of my scrubs, the whiff of the psych ward still unscrubbed from my skin. But that didn't matter to you. I felt like a damn pariah after being carted off and you saw through it all to call me a goddamn. rare. bird. 

Whatever the fuck that means.

For months, you were my favorite notification. Sure, it wasn't logical, since the logistics couldn't ever logistic the illogical. 13-hour time difference, but damn I felt so close to you. In dreams, in mind, in my throat like a lump I couldn't swallow. But when I move there, on your western continent after law school, you're not gonna leave the Midwest. But damn, it was fun to dream.

It was a brief foray into the unknown that I tried with previous men and the burn burned. Bad people. Narcissistic pieces of shit. One of them broke up with me a day after I tried to kill myself. That trauma haunts me, and hurts me to this day but you called me a rare bird and in turn, you puffed your chest and said all the words my ears needed to hear: You don't deserve to be hurt, you didn't deserve that treatment, you are a rocket of a person (whatever the fuck that means), and whoever was mean to me was your enemy too. Perhaps a bit more argumentative than I needed, coming from a relationship with a man who couldn't feel empathy, but it was appreciated.

Birds, rockets, and oh, let's not forget, rainbows.

Then Bali and the reality crashed down on our heads. My dear, sweet drummer boy, how would we beat this? We can't. But the feelings are felt and the ending doesn't end the way we would have wanted it to. Now what do I do, after recovering from the cruelest person I've ever met and meeting such a kind person, turntables turning and being on the other end and geez geez Jesus, no one knows what I'm talking about but God it's confusing to me too okay?

I don't think, I can't think, I lack the capacity to think, but if I had met you before that summer, then we could have had a different timeline. I am now guarded, more than before, more than ever. 

Still, you're here. Like you said, you're always here. And damn does that make me happy.