We Loved Here Once
It seems that it’s not until you are faced with the shadows of someone’s existence that you truly realize all of the places the two of you touched.
Our hometown, we loved here once. These streets. Those stores. The familiarity doesn’t just stem from the fact that I’ve spent the majority of my 26 years of life roaming the cracks and crevices of this place. This town has two layers of my past laid upon it now. The years I spent growing up here, and the years I spent loving you here. We loved here once, and no matter how hard I try to shut my eyes to your silhouette among our favorite places, and close my ears to the cadence of your voice against the waves washing onto the beach, you will always be here. We loved here once.
Our new town, we loved here once. We loaded up our cars and a U-Haul, said our goodbyes and jumped. You left home for the first time, while my home was simply wherever you were. Your heart, your arms, your sleeping bag on the floor on the first night spent in the first place you could ever call your own. Those places were my home and we loved there once. The best part about a new place is the mystery of it all. We ventured into spaces where we had never been, but the familiarity was your hand always in mine. And now, those places still hold you and me and the us that we used to be. Those paths I’ve now walked a thousand times are filled with the echoes of our laughter and wonder and sparkle as we looked on them for the first time. They never got old with you. I drive by my first house here and I can see you walking up the sidewalk through the door and into the chaos of two overjoyed dogs so clearly it makes me ache. We loved here once.
Then there are all of the places where I didn’t even know love could indelibly reside. The books on my shelf that were read while curled against you in the bed we shared. We loved here once. The ping of a text message materializing on my phone first thing in the morning, wishing me a conscious welcome to my day even though I’d gotten a sleepy kiss goodbye an hour earlier. We loved here once. We loved in the dust that’s settled in the backpack I no longer use and the pictures I no longer look at. We loved in the bed that I sleep in every night, but never on the side that you once sprawled on. The music that fills my library, we loved there once, too.
I’ve realized that we’ve loved everywhere I can remember in the last almost-four years we were connected, and we loved in places that I can’t recall. The worst part is not that you appear every day in the things that I see and the places I go and the music I listen to and the thoughts I think and the memories I so desperately try to forget. The worst part is we loved here once, in a space I carved that fits only you, on a heart that does not take kindly to sculpting. And now, in the wake of this new reality, I wrestle with the notion that no matter where I am, or where I go, even to places where our love never ventured, we will have loved there once too. I carry my heart with me wherever I go, and unfortunately, we loved here once.
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