Spanish Pipedream

And just like that, Lovely is a woman.

I understand. I accept. But I can't help but feel as if I have just watched a ship sink.

It scares me to think that my memory will never exist in the form I fell for. I was flipping through a box of childhood trinkets the other night, and I came across his senior picture.

Black and white, tuxedo a little too big on the shoulders.

One hand wrapped around the fist of the other with the thumbs on top, he's perched on the edge of the stool.

His hair is how I always loved it, right at his eyes and dark with youth.

He is gazing down at his feet with a sadness that I initially mistook for a pose but I finally understand.

This is the picture that burns in my mind as what I remember of Lovely. And he knew it was not him.

How selfish of a soul to want someone to stay in the wrong body just so a black and white photograph would remain true.

Nowadays, when he flashes through my mind as I'm driving home at dusk and I flash back to youth, I don't feel longing.

I feel empty.

Lovely will always have a part of me. But I fell for the boy down the street with dark locks that fell just enough into his eyes and then would be brushed away with those hands.

Not the woman.

The photograph is going back into the box. My children will be sifting through curling papers when I am old and will come across that picture.

I will tell them that it was an old friend that blew away with the wind.

and they will put it back and keep going.

I don't if that makes me content or broken, but with Lovely, that was always how it was.