I search for you on crowded subway trains. I search out of this desperate longing to see you again... Its been almost 2 years since I last heard your voice. It's been almost 2 years since I last followed the spiral in your beard on your cheek with my finger and then kissed it. I always loved you with a beard. And you grew it for me even though you knew she would find it odd. For ten years you followed a winter-beard, summer-clean-face cycle... but once we crossed that line and I told you how much I preferred men with facial hair, you kept it for me.
You were so limited in what you could give me but you tried your best. I couldn't have you on the evenings or weekends but you did what you could for me. Trips you didn't really need to take. Calls that weren't warranted. You found ways to give me just enough to keep me holding on. Then you broke me down and split me open so I would never be the same again.
I search for you in small places (a room at the MoMA), or in tight spaces (a cozy English pub on the UWS), but I search for her on the streets of Manhattan. Her flaming red hair would give her away with enough time to allow me to escape. I search for her out of desperate fear and a need to survive, to try and outrun my mistakes (which I made over and over again for a year and four months). You told me once she loves New York City... that she would take trips up here with her girlfriends for the weekend. And then i went and fucking moved here. Now instead of being a long plane ride away from you and her and your broken marriage I am a train ride... or a long motorcycle ride... you could be on my doorstep, with nothing but the clothes on your back like you always told me you would be... if I'd have just said the words... if I'd have just asked you to leave her. You'd have done it. But I didn't. I couldn't.
She found out anyway. After I'd ended it for the fourth time. What I think would have really been the final time. She exploded our lives like you knew she would. I thought you were kidding about the midwestern vengeance but you knew.. you knew she would destroy my life if she could. And she almost succeeded.
It took me months to figure out what to do next after my life as I knew it was taken from me and once the harassment from complete strangers finally slowed, then stopped... but there was New York. This shiny beacon of hope. This place where I could start fresh... where no one knew my story. Where no one had heard the rumors or read the terrible websites. Where i could be just a face in the crowd as I rebuilt... so I did it. I drove across the country and found my way. Found a job that didn't dig too deep, found new friends, have even found the occasional new lover... yet still I search, for you. And for her. Because I can move to a new city but I am still haunted by my past. It hasn't frozen with my first proper winter and its not washing away with the spring. I hope that by the time summer comes my sins will burn from my flesh in the sun and i will be free. Maybe bu then I will have finally paid the price and will be loved again.