Bittersweet

This is something I wrote to say goodbye to my roommate/great friend, who I will never see as often as I used to.

I don’t think I have felt bittersweet the way I feel now

 

So sweet like strawberries and honey on top

And sweet like sunlight that covers the room like a blanket and nice music (not too loud) and curling up on a mattress to await the day

 

And bitter like loud sirens that make us wake up and we sigh and huff and puff

And bitter like seeing a room cut in half, one side with memories still intact and the other naked and best of all free

 

And the birds, (the ones outside our big big window, glass so clear it feels as if we’re floating 8 stories in the air right there with them) they chirp chirp chirp and they don’t know! They don’t know what it means to feel so warm from the inside out! They don’t feel that warmth cool by the time it leaves their body and escape like puffs of steam from their mouths, steam that dissipates just 5 inches away, just far enough where they can’t grab at it

 

And the steam is nothing but steam and it’s cool and warm and it makes eyes twitch under eyelids in anticipation of feeling it sink into skin and I think that’s what missing people feels like.  Like warm inside and cold outside, like swirls in a melted ice cream pint at the foot of Lake Michigan looking at water and thinking it’s paint with people who look out at the beautiful beautiful and remember things and maybe don’t say them out loud. But those things radiate from their bodies, radiate so brightly so strongly until no one knows whether they’re looking at beautiful or they’re looking at people or both (and it doesn’t matter, not really)

 

And that’s what bittersweet is

And oh what a pleasure to feel such a thing in the wake of forgetting my existence