The Gates

I have three papers due tomorrow afternoon and two of them are almost done. I just drank a red bull and I just want to go to bed. Or there's something brewing inside of me that I told myself wouldn't happen. Isn't that the road I thought I was walking down in the first place, when I kept making those calls and responding to those messages and having her to Denver and moving back to Chicago when I told myself it was for every reason but her.
So it happened. It happened when I was walking home from Starbucks-- I had been there studying with Erika and I felt the pangs then, thinking they were jealousy, so I turned the page in my brain and kept trying to write about the various brutal dictatorships the United States has sponsored in the name of anti-communism. And outside when I kissed her I wanted so much more-- but the mutual taste of cigarettes in our mouths probably put her off. We went back inside, but when we packed up and stood outside I got a little more of what I was looking for. And walking away, the feel on my fingertips as our hug was pulling apart, and then walking home and listening to that potential rock star I met the other day, singing so I'm walking up to your gate today to throw my lonely soul away, 'cause I don't need it you can take it back in my headphones. Yeah, that's when I was sure. See, on the train today I knew it as I was recapping the previous week or two and how I wanted to tell her but didn't want to jump too soon. Like how I didn't ask her to be my girlfriend until it seemed unbearable not to. And she told me in Minnesota and I told her right back, but that moment seemed to fade immediately from our collective consciousness of conversation topics. And now I feel that I have to take this leap, I have to go out on this limb, even if I think her head and heart are on the same page. And if things go wrong or I say the wrong thing or she isn't into how vulnerable I am or if I tire her with my burnt-out and jaded perspective of being alive, well then I'll accept that burden of being broken that I placed on those girls that came along before her.