how long does it take to forget a name

or the first time he talked to me. i was so nervous.
i was shakin' just like the leaves off the trees, and it was fall (how ironic).
his eyes where such a wonderful chestnut brown i thought i'd get lost in them. so deep and rich a colour is was that it became my favorite. now, i get to gaze into such a colour every day, as my sons eyes are just the same.
i could never look him directly in the eye at first 'cause he was the type of man to look right into a woman; not at her, or her parts. he surveyed the whole being, straight from the source, as he put it.
for the moment, i'm stuck in this melancholy state that i divert into any time someone else has a chance to look into my eyes like he did. it's better for me to sit down and write this all out while i still can express it, because it gets so muddled at times that it festers, making it damn near impossible to handle any other emotional situation as well as i should, given my age, or level of supposed maturity.
i am a woman now-pathetic that i have to remind myself of that from time to time.
but yet with time passing, it's still not getting any easier each time there approaches a date of significance. it could even be the way the weather looks outside on a particular day, how a man looks at me, or a particular tone in their voice that just brings me back all over again and makes it hard to separate past from present.
i wish i could forget now. i wish i could just tuck him away safely, along with the memories and all the times he used to sing to me; those times we used to lay in bed, faces so close together, skin on skin. we could talk for hours like that and i can still feel that warmth of his breath on my cheek, or his lips against the edge of my earlobe. he'd brush my hair back off my face and run his hand down the small of my back where it would usually stay. we would lay there just like that, and spill each other's guts out; ask each other all the questions we were afraid to ask any other time but in the dark, with music playing softly in the background.
he cried to me only once and his tears flowed down my face and neck like a river and now i can't help but want to scream because he deserved to still be here with me and he's not.
it's so silly girl, i can hear him saying; it's so silly because i have no control over what happened to him or why God took him from my world. and he would tell me the same thing and i want to scream at him for choosing his fate.
but i know he doesn't want me to cry for what seems like will be forever.

i have no control over how i feel now either, and it won't get covered up by the men that have tried feebly to be a part of my life. none have even ever come close to touching how he made me feel. none of them ever will and i'm not trying to find a suitable replacement. there is none.
in fact all of them have done a really shitty ass job of tryin to be what they thought he was to me, so that now i don't even breach the subject barely, but to mention my first love passed. of course they always want to know the details and i've just become used to flowing out a certain template of what when where and how. it's fucking boring.
i bore myself, just listening to the rehashing all this shit as if it's trite and it's not.
people try to pass off as if they understand, but how could they. i expect too much for the sympathy of strangers, cause that's what they all feel like, no matter how many years i've known them.

around his birthday, or what would've been our anniversary or the anniversary of his death i try desperately to avoid the damsel in distress routine, somehow it always seems to men as is i'm "acting a ways", or even cheatin.
totally not me, and probably never will be. it often makes me convinced that when men get that impression it is only because they in fact, are cheaters themselves. so far i've been right.

but i still come back and make as if i've dealt with it and they respect how strong they think i must be for having sustained all that heartache. yes again, woe-is-fucking-me.

well i'm not strong. it's made me weak in fact; afraid to commit and afraid to love and afraid of even getting close to anything that looks like it could be possibly end up somewhere near, what i had with him.
i have limited myself for many years because of his loss, and it's become so comfortable staying on this side of the fence, i almost believe that's just the way i am.
but it's not; it's not me. i am so passionate and caring and insightful and have so many things i could bring to union with a man who has the same, which makes it such a waste that i have been alone for this long.
so many men have tried feebly to bridge that gap but really, in the end it only ends up seeming like cover up to me. a lame effort to placate me: an its-ok-baby
in the few cases where they have been honestly genuine-i just didn't want them.
just 'cause someone throws you a life jacket doesn't mean you have to take it, especially when you know you can tread the waters long enough to wait for a bigger boat(as opposed to a dingy). i'm labeling myself superficial when really, i'm just picky.
i am not looking for the love of my life. he's already come and gone.
but i am looking for someone to spend part of my life with and i'm enjoying the moments of getting to know new people, which does mean actually mean something tangible to me now.
before, being so wrapped up in my own little world i wouldn't have even noticed.
there is always a gap; there is always that lame ass proverbial wall; always a self imposed exile that i throw myself into any time someone truly seems to appreciated me or my time.
i mean let's be honest-how lucky could this woman be to have more than one man, that she respects and appreciates-who willingly returns the flavour??
it does seem to be real for them, as it feels real for me, but then why does it end up being confusing???
it makes me sad at times and it's so ridiculous. i feel like i'm stuck at that point when i was 14, when i met him, and was like "whoa, wait a minute-you what?you care about me?".
now how sad it was that originally i didn't want to believe him when i heard the words. never had a man approached me in such a way of course; i was a baby. i couldn't recognize love when i saw it, or at least be able to see the full potential for love in my life.
now of course love's different. i'm a woman not a baby, though i seem to pathetically shrink to the fetal position every time someone wants more from me: more than just friendship, or more than just a mere attempt at skimming the surface.
at times i can be honest and just make it clear that i am not in the mode where i can go the route of being "deep". i'm just not on that playing field right now, and enjoying the company of a few, not just one. i'm not putting all my eggs in one basket at this point because maybe i really am shopping for a relationship and i want more than one choice to compare. usually when you operate like that, you end up losing the best option of all. but i wont be that sloppy.
i am gathering up all the best moments worth continuing, and just savouring them in preparation.
preparation for what i don't know just yet. but it'll show it's purpose.

i had a dream about him in the summer time; in fact not only the first dream of him in a long time, but the first dream in a long time to remember. period. it was just like many of my former dreams sequences; movie like clarity, and stylized. overwhelmingly symbolic, we were returning from a road trip, back to the scene of a huge shoot out in a house we'd been staying at in the country. it reminded me of when he took me to Lansing once. there was blood spatter on the walls and pools of it on the floor, clotted and smeared through with footprints.
there was a puppy was whining he had blood on his paws from walking through the blood in the kitchen. we went into the bedroom because we were getting ready to pack our stuff and go, but go where i have no idea. it was summer and hot but yet there was a strong breeze making the white curtains flutter back and forth.
all i could hear was the whining of the puppy, the gentle flapping of the curtains, and the rustling of clothes being shoved into a backpack repeating like a skipping record.
then just the smell of his skin, and the warmth of it close to me. i stood up against him pressing my head into his chest. he held my face in his hands and i could feel my tears dripping off his fingers and then back down onto my own neck because there were so many.
so much it makes me hurt inside as the knot pulls tighter, because i remember crying like that when i found out he was dead.
i begged and i pleaded him not to go, i said they'll kill you now they'll kill you. you have so much to live for, i'll do anything just stay with me. he gripped onto me harder as the tears kept falling and i felt like i'd lost my breath.

all he said was "you have to let me go"...
i woke up from that dream and all i wanted to do was to go back to sleep to could feel his hands on my face again; to hear the soft bass of his voice, and the warm sound of his heart beating against me.
it felt so real. the image was, and is so strong still that it's permanently etched in my mind.
all this cuts so deep sometimes making it impossible to speak. it lumps in my throat and it holds my heart in that knot. i don't want to eat or sleep or remember what he used to say to me or how he used to say it. i don't want to feel that close to someone again i don't want to lose someone again and i definitely don't want to give up as much of myself, for fear i will lose the identity that i have worked to hard to rebuild. because i did lose myself in him. when he died, i lost something i can't ever reclaim, you could cliche it as innocence, but whatever it was, the absence of such a quality, had me jaded and stuck in turmoil, for a long, long time.
i refuse to be stuck now though, but the leftover feelings still it get in the way of me being able to rationalize emotions at times.
now, i've reached a point where i just try to let myself "be" in the moment with someone. i just take stalk of feeling good about someone, or a situation and i try not to over analyze but just enjoy the time i have to enjoy.
this is a rare thing for me, just to be comfortable in doing. that laid back approach has almost become natural and it is truly liberating: to feel that free again. it had been a long road, and i still have further yet to travel; but if i just allow myself to exhale every once in a while, instead of holding it all in, i can get the fullest out of each experience.

i can revel in the moment.
seems a small mountain, but never the less a mountain at any size, is a difficult feat to accomplish.

i can feel a new breath against my cheek,
and the voice whispering in my ear,
a hand on the small of my back,
from one that is now here
i can breath fully from the source
of a man who's name is not his,
but for a smile in sky from the love,
who's name forever is.