Sweetnotes: MY NAME by Deux

In my language my name means 'the beauty deep within’. It is a cherished gift my mother left me before she said goodbye.

 It is the 12th month of the 3rd year since I’ve waited for you and its time to move on. I remember I stayed because I believed you were my perfect fairytale, I inherited my mother’s heart and it always told me you will be back before I leave and so I stayed waiting, helpless, hoping. I packed my heart in the suitcase I moved in with as a teenager and there is nothing else only my worn out chair I painted blue last week beside the empty space, probably out of season, probably out of style and left behind against the darker wall hues, against the sad day.

I sit at the other side of the table, yesterday again, I was your cousin. I watched you both hold hands and cuddle, you whispered sweet nothings. She told me I had pretty eyes and was surprised I wasn’t taken, every time I hoped to hate her but she was perfect, a little too perfect. She introduced me to her friends as your cousin and bought me gifts; you made me take them it was all part of your grand scheme. I was here 1^st didn’t it matter to you? On the pillow was the scent of her perfume, I could almost taste it. The side of your bed that was mine for ten years became hers and it was her face I saw on the walls with every toss and turn.

She talked a whole lot more, she dressed a whole lot better, she wasn’t like me. Maybe she’s a lot less complicated; maybe she's a lot better than I am. She didn't have the structures of a magazine model or the features of a goddess, she wasn’t like me. She wasn’t temperamental or stubborn, she wasn’t me. Now I’m staring at the creaking doors wishing I could gather the will to stay.

 I know I let you put me were you put me but I chose to stay. I know you would be back soon after you find your way, you always do. After the excitement has melted, after the dust is settled, you would try to unring a bell, you would try to mend broken eggshells, you would try to take back spoken words. But this time you took a bit longer!

I loved you since we played kites barefoot as toddlers; I was there since we curiously checked what was inside our panties. You had me at first sight. You had me, when I fell, when everyone laughed you waved your hands on my head repeated crying sorry and sharing your ice cream with me. Since your mom took me in after the loss of my parents, she was my mothers best friend, God bless her heart. Every time you left she always assured me you would be back and then talked to you. I wish I knew what she said to you because you always came back sorry.

But we are adults now, we are complicated, we lie now, we hate, we let go! You’ve your cosmopolitan beauty now with whom I help you play a role you’ve made me familiar with. But now I rather give fate a fighting chance than play the role of the other woman. I’m done loving you in fragments and in fraction, without taste and without reason.

If the tears I cried for you could fill the well the Samaritan drew from, it would fill you with living waters, and it would give you all the things you search for every time you go away.

In my language my name means 'the beauty deep within', as a child I despised it because everyone I knew had a colonial name...now the only time I lie about my name is when I see strangers. My other name is ‘longing for you’ and that is what I bore until now.

But then you walked in and then I curiously uttered

“Hello stranger, do I remember you? “