She told Me She had a thing for poetry

 She told me she had a thing for poetry.  It wasn’t the first time she used that line. She winked her left eye when she said “thing” and smirked, slightly, with just the tip of her grin.

I don't want to get into specifics about when we met. It was a long time ago. I was a different person, willing to do whatever I needed to do to be in love. I know love was a thing and things, although they seem to come and go, last forever. So when she told me she had a thing for poetry, I was ready to write the resolution to my life.

You see, when you're young, you feel you can become and do anything, no matter the price. The world is full of PE coaches that wanted to be Lebron James and car salesmen and women that saw themselves as the next Bill Gates. If you are a hopeless romantic and a beautiful girl tells you that they are into poetry, then you, too, can be a poet.  How difficult could it be to put a couple words together to convey a feeling, an emotion?

She told me she was into poetry and at the time it didn't feel manipulative. More like, a task. To be honest, she could've told me she was into some kinky shit like katoptronphilia. I would have kidnapped her into a hall of mirrors, falling in love with the skinny and robust versions of her image at every turn.  Satisfied with just her reflection.

Infatuation can, often times, feel religious as we think and talk about them as if they were a God. They are the last thoughts we have like prayers to heaven. We feel  if we do the right deeds in our everyday we, too, can feel the empyrean of their love. God, if I commit myself to this and that task, please make her fall in love with me.

She told me she was into poetry. I don't remember if it was over the phone or if she told me in person. All I remember is that I went home and wrote. I conjured up the figurative out of our literal exchanges; our esoteric conversations and coincidences. Worlds were created, modified and adapted to fit every single moment that we shared. Is it more than conjecture to believe in the intentions of her gestures?

We continued to see each other, periodically. I'd pause our experiences, like a living DVR, and create mental-still images of the seconds we spent together. It was like recording a video at your favorite concert, trying to preserve the memory, but missing a bit of the authenticity of the moment.

I scorched the midnight oil, writing, trying hard to make memories out of moments that I thought we shared until I felt I had captured enough of her to be that "thing" she would be "into".   I swear to god, there wasn’t a chat that we had in our history that didn’t sound climatic. 

We went on dates, I wrote. A few months passed, and a month later I show up to her front door unannounced, notebook of love poems in hand.

She opened the door and looked perplexed. A poet, much older than me, with faded dip pen and typewriter tattoos, that ran from both his wrists to his neck, put down an old leather bound journal, and stood up behind her as if to say "What seekest thou?"

I stared at them, wolves, bewildered by their tree-like posture. She winked her left eye and smirked. I wanted to unload my notebooks om her doorstep, turn around like a UPS driver, and jog straight back to my car (coincidentally, I was even wearing a dark brown button-up top that day). I wanted to scream at her,  how she was into poetry, and I was a transitioned poet, so, therefore, she should be into me..

Instead, I came up with a weak excuse to leave and turned around without saying another word.

The notebook, mere evidence of what can precede and result in heartbreak was buried because that's what your supposed to do with dead things; trees, words and emotions. I titled it, “Fuck yeah, it hurts,” and promised myself to never, ever, write about love again.