collegiate diversion

I got such an idea to write this while I was driving today.

I took the long way back to my hometown, so I could drive down the roads that reminded me of us. I took a deep breath as I passed over the cement, and stared almost awkwardly at the yellow dotted lines. The single dotted one I felt was challenging me to cross it, to pass the car ahead of me before the other side caught up…I don’t why I like to do things dangerously like that.

I took a hesitant breath as I realized I was getting closer to that moment in the road where I said “Yeah, in high school, I had the biggest crush on you,” just to hint that you’re more than that kind of old friend. And this is the spot in the road when you gave me that curious smile and then ignored my come~on with a “See this sign up here?” and then to the side, “I’ll get to that THAT in a minute but first,~”

THAT was my childish confession. I think it made you uneasy. I didn’t mind that. You went on to tell me that story, about that sign “VINE STREET CLOSED” that had been up for years in that town, and how now a guardrail and a strip of land completely kept VINE STREET from becoming any possible entrance or exit.

That street will always be closed. What pointless signs, we laughed. And then our discussion of my high school crush, you, and your checking me out from time to time, in auditions or in class.

“No, I didn’t know that.” That’s what I said right before you kissed me hours later.

I mean, it seems so stupid now. Me thinking that my silent seven years of foolish love letters and birthday wishes would actually bring you to me in the real world. The adult world. I feel like I shouldn’t have told you anything, given our “ambiguous and contingent nature at the end of the summer.”

I don’t even know what that means.

Those words, Ambiguous and Contingent, how poetic. They were in your email, the one that said you’re getting back with your ex~girlfriend, the one that warned me I wouldn’t be hurt when you came back home.

It doesn’t really. I’ve come to realize that everyone has that EX factor, coupled with their EX story. I’ve come to find that people are always getting back and forth with that EXenigma. Sure, my EXenigma and I have done that too. But he never comes back to me. So I’m alone while everyone is in perfect agony still with their EXenigma and contingent EXcstasy.

Damn it. I still miss you. And him. That’s complicated.

So I drove around North Andover remembering and reviving memories of you and him, just trying to block anything. I repaved the cement, and the memory, blaring Rage Against the Machine out my window in winter, like that would undo something, driving furiously down memory lane.

How childish!

I drove past the common, which they repaved, and remembered the spot where he and I made out. God, how different it all looks now.

And I remember that crooked house off of Pleasant Street, the one with the hole in the roof, that he and I visited on Halloween so many years ago. My best friend’s uncle bought it I guess and now there’s nothing left, just some ditch in the ground. A mud hole. Muddy memories.

So he will go back to his EX.

Everything is so strange and different every time I visit home. Yes, it still feels like home and No, the people who I want to be here are not.

I just like taking the back roads and reviving their presences as much as I can stand, or remember

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