aren't we just terrified

God. I wish I could remember half of the shitty songs you played in your truck.
We'd be spinning by midnight, drunk in the salty air, windows down, curling on those endless back roads on a treasure hunt for five hour energy so we could speed all night. It was the summer of influence and potential - bending any rule meant to keep us safe- everything resting on our fragmented bygones and our delicate future. It was brittle. Brittle as could be; but these were the memories that had our "nights" beginning with a high moon, a few drinks in, always with at least two blunts. Plus added treats. You always had those ready to impress.

I see you in the background of pictures. I search through each one carefully in case your face may have been caught on the edge of the frame. There you are dancing at a wedding, your arm tightly around a pretty girl's hip. Your stare is deep, like I remember. I always felt nervous when you stared because it pierced into me. It is so easy to remember the feeling...how I couldn't tell if your eyes were undressing me down to my underwear, or if they were undressing my soul. You sought into me like I was a combustible figment of your imagination. Someone who could so easily explode into the night with a rebellious, flaring fight, or someone that would concave if you wore me down enough.

Funny to think that both possibly have happened since. It's so desperate of me to write this. I know we would have never worked. It was the idea of you and the way you held the door and held my hand, and briefly, held my heart at its fullest.

It's the natural regret that has sunk in. That feeling tends to rise when you've done wrong with that conniving harm you tried to deny ever existed. I had it. I knew what I was doing...not the whole time. Definitely not in the very middle, but at some point in the very beginning and at the obvious end, I knew which road I'd surrender to. I am so terribly sorry you were caught up in my desperate confusion of my heart and my head. I can't believe the unnecessary amount of times I make myself relearn this lesson. The people I've dragged through this dirty muck is getting to be so offsetting, especially since I have to live with myself for creating this nostalgic mess.

I can't help wishing sometimes I was across from you in those pictures; that your arm was linked around my back. Then again, saying it only makes sense because it would happen for the briefest moment in my dreams, because once I awaken, I know deep down the only way to keep this regretful feeling lasting is the sense of abandonment I induced.

But, come on. You know I'll never forget making fun of your shitty country cd's in your truck. The times that we ran barefoot on the beach not knowing which way the sun would rise or at what point we'd be swallowed in the sea. Those nights were filled with longevity of the finest kind! The simple pleasures of being so penetratingly fucked out of our minds - booze and smoke and songs and treats. More treats and songs and smoke and warm sheets to complete a night of running barefoot and infinite. Please forgive me. I wrote to you a few days before. I hope you never read it.