“Around Campus” - #10, 11
I highly doubt that anyone is reading this journal anymore, so I don’t know whether I feel sad that my somewhat secret thoughts that I obviously don’t want to keep secret will never be known or if I should feel more at liberty to pick my own brain. No matter. Two shorts:
Sorry
I wonder why I said “Sorry” in the stairwell as you were coming up, a tray full of food in your hands, plugged into your iPod or CD player—I couldn’t tell which—and your backpack weighing down on your back. I wonder why I said it with a little laugh, embarrassed really, as if you caught me at something—coming down the steps, that was what you caught me doing, and as always dressed like a bum, though I’ve learned that I’m not really ashamed of what I wear anymore (or maybe I’m still lying to myself)—and pressed myself against the wall as if I could somehow make more room for you when I really didn’t need to. Actually, I wondered how I could run into you again so quickly, for not just ten minutes ago, you had been coming down and I had been going up—and didn’t I give you a smile? Now I can’t remember if you smiled back or if you even noticed. I wouldn’t be surprised, really, we never speak. I’m a random face you see every now and again.
But, really, I wonder why I said “Sorry” and I wonder why you said “It’s OK,” as if you really were excusing me of something. Was I saying “sorry” for being there at that time and at that place, as if I could have predicted that you were going to be coming up at that exact moment? Or maybe I was saying “sorry” I hadn’t been going down slower, so that we might have encountered each other around the bend where we might not have had such trouble? Or maybe I was saying “sorry” for my existence—maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t ever come into being at all so that this might not have occurred.
Because to tell you the truth, I find myself saying “sorry” for lots of things and for no apparent reason, as if I’m naturally inclined to apologize for everything relating to me. “Sorry” seems like the instinctual response. I swear it lives on my tongue considering how many times it slips off of it. I’ve been apologizing for a long time, though, and I’m not sure for what anymore or if I should be or if I shouldn’t. I think the word has lost all meaning to me.
But you don’t want to listen to this. Sorry.
Words: 403
A Thought/A Confession (Possibly unfinished… or never meant to be finished… a lot of unsaid thoughts)
You know, I’ll never tell you—as in, you’ll never hear it from these lips, though “never” scares me because “never” is too permanent and lasting a promise and I can’t say that I won’t one day break it—how I almost leaned down and pressed my lips to yours, wondering, wondering if it would be wonderful or terrifying, knowing in the end it could only be horrible. You’ll never hear how the thought popped into my mind, like an unexpected soap bubble, impulsive and vivid. You’ll never know how close we might have been in that moment, how unbearably close, how decidedly awkward and young. And I’ll never know how you might have reacted, with what kind of eyes you would have looked at me—or if we’d've been able to ever look at each other again.
But I will tell you I am a coward. You might not understand, but that’s all you need to know.
Words: 158