I remember, I was just staring at my wrists; how skinny and fragile they were. I sat there just measuring my right with the length of my left fingertips, making sure they always touched. How odd I always thought this was. The same hand, the same wrist, but the difference of height in each finger didn’t allow all to touch; always just the ring and middle.
When I first met you, you had the most serious expression that quickly softened to an exposed grin. Your dark brown eyes as rich as the Lindt chocolate I craved every day of my adolescent life. At first, you simply caught my eye as an interesting creature, but had I only known that you would end up meaning more to me. It was the little things you always did for years on end that had me thinking. The slight flirtation that was always sworn as completely innocent. When I first saw you, I did not think that one person could make me feel so good. I no longer cared to wonder who else was watching as I tied up my hair or sang uncontrollably at the top of my lungs. It took me years to finally piece together that you were my ring finger. The first to touch and wrapped simply around my fragile wrist. You were a commitment. Something I was sure I wanted for more than just a harmless pleasure. When we got closer, I swear there was nothing that could make me hate you. I knew you. Surely I knew I did. I mean look at us. All this time we have stuck by each other, even when time became priority, it didn’t set us adrift.
Today it’s as if we're this bipolar summer weather that never truly knows where it wants to go. One minute we’re begging for water in this séance under the sun and the next we’re waiting on this cooling wind to come to a halt. The “middle finger”. That’s what I like to call that downward spiral. That total “eff you” moment, in a battle between scarcity and emotion. It scares me how unsettling it can be to hear a name and simply want to avoid it like the plague. Now a day, I just wonder why and how quickly everything went wrong. The questioning of whether or not we should have bothered. Should we have left things the way we were? Not speaking out loud what, I don’t know about you, but what I’ve been feeling for quite some time now? When I think of you, I don’t feel hatred or sadness. I just feel pure disappointment. That all those years of friendship lead to nothing but silence. That one of only two people I was able to trust, can’t even look at me in my face and be completely honest with me.
The “I’m sorry” just doesn’t seem to fit anymore. Words are just so easy for people to say, but what a person decides to act on, now that shows something words cannot settle. The truth. The contradicting, unreliable truth. A ring finger that once touched so easily, now struggles to reach and my middle finger rests effortlessly across that skinny, fragile wrist. A commitment of friendship is now nothing more than a simple “eff you” moment.
When I first met you, I didn’t expect us to be here years later, ending up the same way we started… as strangers.
