between these boardwalks

How do I begin again? How do I take the promise of something new, something real, and not  sabotage it by comparing them to something that never took effect—a figment, scenarios built upon expectations and fantasies?

Let's call them Agate and Topaz. I met both of them by design. They don’t know each other, but they know of each other. I was the unspoken bridge between the two, and neither of them have inquired about the other. They were alike in many ways, with birthdays 6 days apart, I wondered how I was lucky enough to know different people cut from the same cloth. The answer is, I don’t. I only believe what I told myself would be true.

There was music coming out of Topaz’s phone, outside the city hummed amidst railways and skyscrapers that looked down upon us like giants in the sky, the room was sunken and frigid. Not even the warmth from Topaz’s embrace could soothe me. There was familiarity in the way they cradled me, comfort in the gap between our skin before they brushed their lips on my shoulder at 3 in the morning. I felt their hand coming in contact with my back, noticed I was cold, and lifted the blanket to cover us both. It didn’t wake me, because I’ve been half-asleep since I heard Topaz snoring, but I don’t think they know that I knew.

They’re quick on their feet, quicker with their words. If I have to picture them in a single scene, it would be a spacious library, with canvases and paint littering the space. The window left ajar, with an ashtray on the sill and butts piling up as the smoke evaporates into the world, it catches the light. There would be trimmed plants in the corner, and a stereo playing only instrumentals in a loop. Topaz would be standing rigid, firm, and stern. Their hands would be spotless despite the mess, and they’d catch my gaze with a cigarette between their lips burnt to the filter (Why are they still smoking it?) and adjust their posture, scanning me from head to toe. “There you are,” They’d grin.

With Agate, reality happens more often than fantasy. The buildings that enveloped us are peaceful, almost forlorn...like we all had forgotten what it means to exist. The room had ‘character’ as she described, we took trips to the rooftop to smoke and unwind, with inches apart she looked at me as if she wished she could give me everything I want and more, the stars were hidden and we couldn’t look past the night sky, but she’s the only spectacle that mattered in my mind. She would tuck my hair behind my ear if they got in the way, her fingers perfectly filling the gaps between mine. At sunrise, her genuine response to my ‘how did you sleep?’ made me smile.

She would not be in a library, in fact she was quite the opposite. Words don’t come easy to her, but she doesn’t need them. In my daydreams, Agate would walk barefoot along a luscious porch. Plants and vines overgrown, sage green ornaments on every surface with birds and insects chirping delightfully outside at the sight of her. A faint scent in the air from a nearby oven, serving us fresh cookies and sweet tea. She doesn’t wait for me, I’m there with her already.

It was too obvious; before me were lives I could lead where either time could stretch on forever—with someone who reciprocates, or nights would be filled with dread because as much as I wanted them I didn't cross their mind as often as they did mine. Then again, I wouldn’t know for sure...it's almost as if Topaz lives only in my head, like an imaginary friend I conjured when I was six, then apologized to her for not feeling the way I intended to and asked her to leave. The only difference is I was willing to pave ways for Topaz, to chase these delusions and one day wake up realizing every detail I’ve imagined of them. I thought I could not miss a mark, but time and again Topaz relieved me of these fantasies.

Lack of love makes you yearn. I admit, my thoughts haven’t been contained despite wanting to control them. Walls were built to secure, sometimes restraint. Only between four walls could I apprehend these self-inflicted illusions, only in rooms with Topaz could I see them for who they are, and it‘s between these boardwalks that dreams seem possible. If walls were always either too thin or too narrow yet impenetrable and opaque, the cracks on these wooden planks held the promise that imagination could shift through them and reach me. 

It wasn’t until I wrote this down that the thoughts I had of Topaz could not realize, and I was holding onto mere fabrication, and for the most part, I conjured them up in my mind more times than they asked me if I wanted to be a part of their life, when in real time it never came up. While Agate jumped on the first opportunity to become mine, Topaz ran. I don’t blame them, and I wrote in the past ‘I wanted to know what it’s like to be in close proximity to your beating heart, but I had been, though somehow it wasn’t enough,’ yet I’d harbor countless fantasies where Topaz and I would finally be together. Our bed’s made, yet neither of us are sleeping in it.

I’m faced with the discernment that what I cannot have from Agate is what I still expect from Topaz, I don’t want us be strangers again but I want to escape from these phantoms, I want to—through and through—let life take its course without my inability to let go interfering.

It was in Agate’s eyes, a sense of belonging and longevity, that I did not find in Topaz (at least not for me) that assured me that my ego would only hurt all three of us.

Boardwalks wont get to me anymore, and Topaz would just have to find another mind to live in.