Forgetting

-1-

A note on forgotten love: it sometimes creeps up on you like a viper. For a time, I was consulted by a ghost of a girlfriend I continually blame myself for leaving in Virginia. The young woman had a round face and full lips and is shapely in the right parts but not stick-like. I sustain this thought in my heart that I was wrong to leave her, although, being from Los Angeles, I could not see me living so far away. I wanted to come home. Virginia didn't feel like home but, as it began to roam near, that dreaded day in which I would leave her, like a dark fog closing in on me, I began to feel more miserable. Is love that way? Yet another token that proves it's real. How appropriate to wish that love were real when in reality it disappears. Vanishing like a heart-shaped explosion's smoke is how I entered a cold, crowded and lonely Los Angeles airport. What thought could I have had in mind? I think I must have gone insane. Lost.

I wandered, then, for years on end on this trek I now follow with the knowledge that love could reawaken in the simplest things. Perhaps, even in the way one drinks a coffee or in the way one treats his peers. I do not wish to treat my brother or my sister or my mother with neglect but those video games I played, made me forget myself. Perhaps, I'll now play less. The lesson is well-learned when the heart becomes full-grown in the eyes of people that see you all around. I think that leaving Virginia is something of a shame.

Do I regret it? Is it good to live a life of written complaints and un-written disdain with petty regrets of ten years past?

Still, I think of that un-finished book that denotes my own failure in finishing certain works. I did not finish saying good bye to my Virginia love, the truest love. More coffee might work to instill in the mind those images of her and me sitting across from each other in a quiet motel eating pizza. The loneliness I feel right now, with all this roaming sound, a television on, a radio and screaming from outside, pales. If you compare the beating of my heart on one day of eating pizza to this one, I could not think of how to put the volume down on that day. Today, where is that noise? I hear crickets in that place.

Virginia isn't all that good to strangers. There's sharks in that place, now known as a common wealth. Have you ever seen Virginia, the cold and ugly arm pit of the East? It rains a hellish storm, brewing forth to ruin lover's days. It ruins picnics and crushes vistas, dissolves large Umbrellas like they were made of confetti. The world ends in Virginia where love once grew. If love can grow in that place, it can grow in any place.

My Virginia girl, the saddest part is that I never knew you well enough to kiss you good bye, to miss you until now. How do you break my heart, now ten years gone? Go and break it then, while I was next to you.

I deserved it, then.

More a sinner now for not forgetting you soon. For that, you get an apology, but as you have forgotten my name and as I have forgotten yours, I ask you keep the "mistake" discreet.

-2-

Really, I wanted to explain the reason for this cheek and temple tickle. A rain of arrows caresses my back in shards of pain I can not get rid of. This is mostly the effect of what this is about, all the pain expelled in simple, brutal words. Don't call me Boethius, please. I have no Lady Luck or Lady Anything to help me. With the hope of a lady thus dissolved, new love may newly-be allowed.

Yes, after all the mess of the previous effort, I still linger in the wake of love's grasp. It's like I'm in the net but can't get out. However, only one fish in the net does not make love's spiraling knife ambitious to cut. I've ran out of the past. Let's forget those people there. They're like pictures of bad memories now coming back. It's too late now. Stay put. You bring twenty samurai swords, as though from another dimension, into my path and I try to fight you off with my slingshot. How dare this life send me into a battle such as this unprepared like a lost traveler in a maze. If it were a puzzle, so much easier to figure it out.

Now, I don't know where the pieces go. Does one heart fit into the world next to another? Try fitting a heart to discreet textual relationships, see how easily one gets crushed by irrational Scrabble practices. It was a joke directed at "cutsy" text words that don't really exist "No wat eye meen?" Where is my English sense? I put it next to my common sense in a box and now it can't get out. To think out of the box, one deserves the merit badge for remaining single. "L.O.L. Kongrats."

It just means that people prefer simple. Thus so complicated I, dumped by women, women and some women (and a monkey), could not find some way to relate to all these new women who are dumped by monkeys, monkeys, monkeys (and some men). Some people say they'll never find a connection to a woman they love. Really? You couldn't pay an electric bill for five months but it still was easier than finding a connection, some would say. Not really. It was six months.

I'm sure that people are just often negative thinkers. Oh, I like this ice-cream but I bet it'll be closed by the time I get there. Some such notice to the heart about the complicated adventures of the future, is always at hand. Pity notice. You get it for free, after all. There's nothing wrong with that. However, it might be nice to live in reality. Ugh, reality. You want reality? Go live in the cold and desolate place that Virginia is, maybe you'll find a love you can never have there.

I blame too many people all at once. It was me. It was my fault. Sorry, did I just steal from the bible? No, I need to blame myself a third time, remember? Part of the blame falls on her, too. What is it that I could do, if she fell to her girly games so fast. As soon as I had told her, she accepted my good bye--but what a good bye of no more than two words. I would not want to ever dig a grave so deep ever again in the muddy streets of Virginia where feet sink into the dirt and come out blacker than they were before. Perhaps, that knee-deep filth somehow entered my heart enough that her love, her stain remained in my heart, enough for me to keep writing about it this long. Yes, I blame me but don't pretend you were not as well at fault.

I hate pretending but I pretend every day. I pretend everything's good in my head and every thing is good everywhere around. People are happy around the smiling me, who refuses to lie about what I could do. I can't do anything. Perhaps, I have a one percent chance to write, to win a writing contest in some prison for the eternally depressed.

I wish I could write about love like it was music. I so love both those subjects but could never get across to write in either subject so well. Pehaps, I wrote a few poems back in my day. Did I ever write such filth that could inspire anyone? I could perhaps inspire my pet dog to eat the paper, a result of having read him a poem. His "critique" suffice to say was less harsh than that of my peers or peer-group.

I wish I could write all day on the nuisances of every day. I have a lingering disease called lack of sleep. I can not go to sleep earlier than midnight. I have tried but I remain awake thinking of some love or some fantasy of a love that could not be. I think that perhaps I will love someone who is pretty but then I think why would I want a pretty girl, such pretty girls always fighting with each other for other pretty things. Would I want to be in the middle of a fight between pretty and pretty? Such a pretty end, then, with all my things considered a possession of a pretty "thang." Thinking is brutal sometimes. Now, I think of a girl who isn't pretty or thin but just herself, yet in this search, searching for a person who acts like a person is just silly. Does that even exist anymore? Are there any more real people or do they only exist as a profile on E-date or Dead-Space or Two-face book.

When I think of the pretty girl, we live in a big house without some bothersome dog that makes the mailman hesitate to drop letters in the box. We've had six complaints so far. Now, we don't get mail unless we get a mailbox. I lie. He gave us another chance.

Then, I think, what about that house? Who cleans it and would cleaning it make the pretty girl less pretty. Perhaps, I clean it to make myself content that I deserve someone so....generous that she actually is with me, some rambling romantic that can't express his feelings correctly in one sentence.

I used to dream about falling off buildings or that I was a character in those video games I play. Thank God I don't play them as much anymore. I think that playing or being played is quite hilarious. The game plays me because now I live in the world that chooses to poke me. Poke the man who is down and out, no more hero than a mouse lost to an inconsiderate drain.

-3-

Sometimes I think the world doesn't think I feel pain and it pushes me around to sink me lower. I think that every day is bad and is going to be bad but only for me. And that it's going to be worse, much worse for complaining so much about it. Do you think that? Don't think that. Don't think like me. Be positive. I tell others that to lie to myself, to think that I am helping when perhaps I just drown them out with my fake happiness. I wish I could be really happy, so as to inspire the poet in me to have something real to write about. I write only about fake loves. I used to write about real ones, what could happen if they were real. Again, I cowardly escaped their grasp. This time it was my fault three times. I knew a girl whose feelings I hurt for not telling her exactly how I felt. This man that is me is worse than someone yelling at a woman. At least, with unwarranted screaming the girl knows about her would-be lover's intentions. Me? They never saw me coming. One girl thought I had gone crazy from staring at her, as she so fondly stared back at me. Perhaps, I had done more than one wrong thing for not telling her how I really felt. I should be the talking lead of a stupid-man's doomed love prophecy.

Yet, still I must say this. You, reader, don't be like me. Don't get scared to toss a coin in the fountain of love. Your chances are better than mine. Mine are zero since I began to feel it. So stupid me, with women. How smart I was in that math class, why couldn't I have class when it came to the important things?

I wish I had more friends. Intelligence isn't measured by the pursuit of knowledge in my book. No. Not in this book. In this book, let's put it on a scale of how many people admire and respect you. Those are real smart people. What does it count to be smart without others to admire you for it? What does it count to say you're smart without any friends? Without many, many friends, you are like the wind without air traveling into unknown worlds by yourself with no way out. Do I know what it means to be a friend? I've only seen true friends in books and movies, how would I know? I know how to be a caring brother. Does that count? At least, I knew enough about that.

Nevertheless, one brother does not one true friend make. Brothers and sisters get married and then they have a life to lead. Not me. I am the lost seed, the leaf crumbled on the street left to struggle on its own. I sometimes see in others eyes a measured amount of determination that I could never have. How do I get such a thing, determination? Without a friend to push me, love, perhaps a trickle of understanding? I don't know about depression, either.

I'm my own worst comedian. Stop making me laugh, you, you're not even worthy of someone else's respect. I got good rhymes for a time like this, though, as the room glows light, right or wrong, we're all just people trying to sing a song, no? Should I say, no, baby? Who is there to say baby to in this lonely room? A long-forgotten mystery novel, an empty dish with a spent lime on it, perhaps the un-stuffed doll lying around in the corners of the room? It has seen more light than me in its shadowed area beside a bookstand. I feel less bad for it. One day when I was mad, I ripped its hand and gave it such a destiny.

I feel less upset, though. Gladly, I'm not violent. Unfortunately, also not a jerk, so not much of a drinker or a woman's perfect choice, even by Hollywood standards. It was a joke on the supposed Hollywood attitude of not having biases over people who are not pretty.

My head hurts sometimes as I think about love, how I won for so few days, and lost for so many years. I won that girl in Virginia happily for two days. Do you even know bliss, soul-less world of internet and cheap wine? Do you what it is to be kissed, to have someone return affection to you in one instant? Perhaps, you know. You might even know how to stay friends with people like that or how to achieve a moment where you know--you know quite well--that it could never be better. You felt it for life. I had two days.

-4-

Loss. So much was lost in such a short time. People who, in a lifetime, could not be replaced. Friends of mine, not just women, were lost to me in one year. I came back to a girl I used to love, now married with three kids. I came back to my friends, all three of them. One moved out and two have not spoken to me in a year. So stupid to lose friends like that. What can you call a friend? I wish I had some excuse to go and call the people I know friends but they're so insulted by my presence for things I now consider stupid that I have done and apologize to them. They say that a true friend will forgive you.

I don't know. I may have been wronged than I have wronged but to have been wrong so often with love, perhaps explains why it no longer chooses to come around. How I wish I couldn't write this slop so well. I know it's not that well. And it isn't even so good to be called slop. Such egoistic attitude of mine; I blame my video games. I blame my lack of friends. I blame me (more than three times).

I lost my pens, too. I had so many pens. I think in one day I may have lost a dozen pens. I've lost pens in couches, in a neighbor's house, at work, in that awful Hurricane of Love that was Virginia, in tightly-closed vases, under doors and over terraces. I even lost a number of pens in the ocean where the breeze feels like life.

I feel bad for losing these things. These tools that are not members of a family contributing to a typing disorder. Those pens have been good friends to me. They treated me well. They were like ghostly friends, except that maybe you sometimes see ghosts where there are none. In the streets of Los Angeles, in the darkness of a Halloween night, the only ghosts are those of the past that creep up on me in my sleep. I forget the magic that is being happy. I see it in my nephews sometimes and it reminds me a lot of how to proceed.

The worse thing I lost was my sense of right. For a moment, I lost it. Then, regained it bravely, fighting off savages that accused me of acting irrationally. The only irrational action on my part was not standing up for myself in time before malicious rumors could be spread about me. To think that I would not consult my sanity in those times. Who was that person, that was created out of fiction? I don't even know him anymore. All I know is defeat, and lost loves. Does that make me evil? Inaction could be evil but where does action lie in this economy? To the right, to the left, God, point me to the path.

You can spin a clock's handle in all directions, there are no correct times or directions for failure. They tell you to leave things in the past but your past comes back no matter how much you ignore and fight it off. It screams "On Guard!" with it's sharp silver sword at your back while you dance atop a white pole dangling dangerously fifty feet in the air trying to keep your balance. Do you stand a chance? Perhaps love will give you those wings to fly. Not really.

I mean love will give you something.....to remember. How I wish I could forget. Give me something to forget. Not a pill, I don't take pills. Punch me in the face. Perhaps, it'll be more refreshing than coffee. I kid. I wouldn't want to be hit in the face, still a coward even before my own suggestion. Well, if you truly feel that way, who am to stop you? Just, not in the eye.

-5-

Could I have foreseen this? I don't think I could have been so wrong about everything, making a mistake after a mistake. Long ago I joined the navy, perhaps a mistake, perhaps not. For nine years I lived under it's umbrella, responsibly, pretending to be happy with all that money. As I began to spend it more and more, I began to worry about what I should do, as bills that began to rise came back to me. I don't know what to do now. The bills remain but the money is gone. Still, I remained in the reserve part of the military. I couldn't really give up on that part, not that much.

At the time of my leaving the active side, I thought I was doing the right thing. I left because of pretentious reasons, thinking I was better than someone else. I thought that others were leading me to disaster but I was wrong. I led myself into that mess. Now the fiery chasm of my doom stands before me and I await for God's boot to kick me into it. What is He waiting for?

I fell into their traps. The loan scandals took our house, almost were it not for Obamas inspiring part. I saved my house but for how long? How long will I be a burden to my brother who pays everything? I used to be that man that now he has become. What is the measure of me, then? Some culprit who lives off others in order to inspire who? I still pay all the bills but they're paid with other people's money. I am low. I am wrong and it is my fault (at least six times my fault).

Yet, I did not know it would be this way. I suspected that some things might be worse, but I thought I would be happier, always thinking stupidly that being happy came before being a hard-working individual. How are you happy without work? At least, at work you could form friendships. Thus, how can anyone be happy without friendships and their work? Alas, I have not found a job. Here and now, it becomes like a hidden golden mask in the ocean to find. Rather play a fictional fantasy game that look for a job again, right? How stupid I was then for thinking this.

I couldn't have been more wrong about love. For moments lost in sleep, I lusted for unfaithful women, those that you see on television with their loose hair and short-cut skirts or in their Super Secret thongs and pajamas, red and black lace with legs that grow up to a bar-stools height. Then, I was wrong for not looking for a person. I sought a woman simply for pleasure. I was no different than any other pig on the street seduced by imagery. Ay, but don't hit me, yet, that isn't me no more.

Instead, I choose to growl at failed relationships of my past. You may laugh at me now. How you do laugh at this thinking I'm a fool for losing such. I think that if you've won your love, you have the right to read about me and how I failed so horribly, if only to laugh at me. Yes, please laugh at this fool, you who have a love and plaid the game correctly and knew the correct things to do. Pity, I was a fool. Instead of love, envy. When I loved turned it into tragedy, blamed my place and my circumstances, thought, like some fictional Odyssea, that it was destiny. Is it destiny to blend all these feelings of remorse into some course of study for youths who will not care in the end? Nay, study me not. I'm a fool. Do you study clowns now as you go to school?

The only thing I'm happy for is others. I can feel happy for you. I feel that it is right, as you have done what I could not. I'm glad that your "fate" was not as cruel. How pretty that your pretty girl fell right into your arms. Oh, but I hate that you don't talk, as I would talk with my own flower. I would talk so of my flower that sometimes she would tell me to shut-up so she could speak of me and how my incessant speech is driving her away. How I would talk of my flower to others that they would be less likely to be my friends because of my incessant rambling. I would not go that far now. I think that's who I was. The talkative fool, who chose not to listen.

I wish I could have listened to my Virginia girl who pleaded to me that it could still work out, long-distance, two-worlds apart. She was right. Rather two-worlds apart than two-hearts in parts. In my selfish search for love, I was despised. In my selfish search for love, I may have fallen to an internet scam for fifty bucks. In my selfish search for love, I may have been known as that guy who visited dating sites the first day they were up. Quickly, I learned they were scams, men set up to rob you of your cash with broken dates and false images of women on the net. I learned not from me but from watching others fail with misery. Ah, but a lesson learned by me. One of so few that I could have learned.

I'm sorry, Virginia, I say again. You were ugly, an ugly state but I, in leaving you, more so. I disgust myself ten years ago and today. What a wretched fellow to leave that beauty on her own, to survive in shark-infested waters in cold coasts in another world. If I had only listened, perhaps....but that story is long over and your ears pierced with the repetition may grow steadily def from hearing of it.

Oh, but I am not a man that often speaks his mind. Thus you see this longish thing written in one night in order to kill what? Some desperate loneliness. Perhaps, it is to kill the illusion that a man like me will ever find love. Love? Ha. Rather look for a lost kitten in a dump. Rather be thrown into a sewer to look for a rat of a particular species and color and origin.

-6-

The internet killed it for me.

I don't know anything more foul, more gross, more well-intentioned but ill-fated. You do not meet people in this internet. You meet a ghostly persona who doesn't know how to speak correctly. You meet a friend without a voice. What is a friend without a voice? He's just some letters on a screen. If you were to be doing this in 1989, people would think you're crazy talking to a computer with typed letters. My critical notions of it maybe cause for the lack of friends. Perhaps, I am not altogether that friendly. Who to blame for that?

I don't know. Oh, wait. I am friendly, just others find me worrisome or too distracting to look at it. It's okay. No reason to follow logic as to why I have few friends. Let's just deal with people kindly and hope they return that kindness in turn, even if it is as cold as Virginia. Perhaps, one summer morning, as I wake to look at the house I saved with no light water or gas in it, I will find that my friends, those who have attained a measure of respect for me, still want to come over to talk and tell jokes. How possible is this? Possibilities are endless but not in this. This is some random thought of fantasy. It's as real as a dragon. In my head one day, gone in an instant. Real friends don't appear because you want them to.

This think we call our friend, the net helped to create so many disturbing things, among them the distribution of illegal cds. So much good music is lost because of downloading. Now, no more artists want to perform as badly. For what? What is the profit of a music industry without real music? Where has our music gone? Without real music, with meaningful aspirations for hope, love and the future, where is society. We are founded by people. Society is not the internet. A social site is the opposite of what it claims to be. By coming onto the internet a person is disassociating themselves from their friends. Now, there is no longer the need to meet a person at their parents house, thus excluding social interactions which are meaningful and bring people closer together, because they could "chat on the net". I rather talk to cardboard than be seen talking to an image on a computer. Who even knows if that person on the other end is the one typing these things to me?

Love is ruined so fondly for me. Where is the flirtatious outburst, the giggling? Does "LOL" replace the sound of love? If "LOL" was a factory, I would be labeled a Pyromancer for burning it down. Rather you slap me in the face in real life that laugh at a joke I made on the internet. Yet, I fall guilty to this trend too. Yet I don't type the LOL, rather let my co-workers hear me laughing than fall pray to that trick, to disassociate me from reality.

Stop going on that machine that is tricking you into having fake unreal friends, my friend. Learn from a guy who has nobody to call girlfriend or friend, and cherish the real things in your head. A picture on the net can't replace the reality of it.

-7-

Just know I write this so you can laugh at me.

Ugh. My life is so desperately downgrading. I think I can go no lower and yet lower I go. Don't think this is some parallel to that Italian descending into the tenth level of hell. That deserves a good "lol" as I've been in hell for ten years now. God, He might help me escape, If I try to be good and do my best. I hope. I may be over the limit on that, though, as I've wronged so many with me not telling them how I felt. God may see me as some fool, some outcast not in need of forgiveness. "Forgive him, why? That fool only throws love away."

I wish I could swear that I would not do it again. I might get close but what if it comes to me and yet again I have to leave to some stupid greater destiny. Nay, rather be a fool with no bed and no sheets than let love slip away from me again. Ah, but that's just foolish talk. Love will come at its own pace or will not. More than likely, not. As I've said, I've become the conduit, the I'll-help-you-to-love but not the lover. To expect such a thing from me, love? As fondly as I cherish it for existing, I doubt Lady Love would give me another chance. You only get so many chances, am I right?

One time I saw me as a contestant in a dating show with all these pretty ladies choosing among three fellows their perfect match. They played a game of how to approach a girl. My character was well-dressed in a gray suit and a styling top-hat with the shiny black shoes and tie. I said onto this girl as I approached the bench on which a pretty girl sat, "Hey you! What are you doing here, huh? You can get any of those fools, including me, and betters because that's how good-looking you are." Oh, I certainly would not be the best-suited for going on a game show. Perhaps, to be kicked out of one.

In any case, I rarely see this as a good chance to write my faulty stories. Yet I found that I could write them here without remorse on a Saturday evening because I felt sad. Why? Same old topic: lost love.

I used to think that women weaving baskets were doing it for some man but there is an art, a magic to weaving. It can make a woman forget things, stupid things, irrational things such as me not telling them how I felt when I felt it, how cowardly. I do not want to be that man, anymore, that coward, yet I find no way of erasing him. How do I erase him? Do I send an apology to those people I hurt? Perhaps, I may end up looking like a fool and like an even bigger coward for not saying to them at the time in which I hurt them those words of apology. I truly do feel bad I did those things.

I would not do them again without considering the outcome, how I feel or how they feel. Perhaps, I would do them again once or twice but only as a form, a gateway to ask some girls out on a date, yet never again to simply stare at them. Now, my looks have gone. No woman looks at me. I have nothing to offer quite clearly, a man of thirty-three out of a job and most recently heart-broken by the past. It's like buying a faulty phone that even in the store you see the blue sparks coming out of the back.

I can write, at least. Writing pays the same as a punch in the face. It pays you, though, in a sense that in it you can reveal your feelings, if only to some unspoken friend that might one day read it off your desktop or laptop. It doesn't matter, not like I ever wrote anything very interesting. I did write about my failures with love, yes, that was incessant and quite annoying and even might have killed a few fingers of mine from the consistent typing.

I don't care. Like I said, I wanted to write it. I don't often have that spark that makes words appear on a page and that's sad to me. It's like losing someone you cherished for a long time to some unknown force. This is how I lost love, to some unknown force. To me, at least, it seemed unknown and quite unafraid I apologized for that. Yet for those times I didn't know love, for the first time in which love fooled me into thinking it was less than I thought it was, how can I forgive anyone for that? I do not forgive Lady Love for that, for making me think that she would love me back. To think, me a silly boy of thirteen, frail as can be, still frail if you think of me twenty years later and only thirty pounds heavier, could be in love with the Valedectorian of the school. This thought was preposterous. Society didn't fit me into that role.

How quickly I fell off the scale? Was I even competition for that other person that she ended up with, Lady Love? How dare you not lead me to some other, to someone that would love me back. Instead, to a trail of woe and anguish that lasted to this day and only amounted to more pain as it stacks up on a list of failures that makes me look even more like a coward. No. I was no coward. Just young and stupid. Blame me for being stupid, yes, blame me for that all day but I blame you for having put that curse on me so soon and without notice.

-8-

What does she think, I thought to myself quietly in my room eating ice-cream watching it drip onto my book of love, that love exists not in reality? That it won't come at me full-force, that I could take such a thing at such an early age and still grow up to be a man full of sanity and grace and cheerful attitude toward other women of simplicity? I managed somehow, still Lady Love should not have made such an assumption. My heart, at the time, broken.

Others, I've seen many, even if they don't want it, even stupidly they say, they don't want it and deliberately leave women they love, they get their good bye. Not me. I got one sad good bye from a married woman.

Oh, it hurts, yes to write idiotic truths and it might not hurt you, as you laugh at them. Laugh hard, my friend. I write this for you, for your entertainment, that you might be more insightful about me, as you think "how pathetic can this idiot be."

I guarantee that it will be worse. Worse, yes. In my future I see yet other heart-breaks, broken promises along the way. I promised I would graduate with my bachelor's in this English thing I write so much. Yet, the pages of that story glide away slowly into a blue riverbank overshadowed by a yellow moon. I wish I could complete that promise to others and myself yet so many things bother me with as they go along and crush my dreams.

-9-

Can anything be fixed? I tried to fix things. They just got worse. I tried to throw fire into a pit of despair, how do you burn despair off your fingers? As they light, the fuel of despair ignites them more. The acid of loneliness does not put out such fires.

I think it will come to doing simple things. I've done them before, washing dishes and cleaning rooms and reading old books I promised to myself to read one day. What can I read that would get me out of my mess? I can't read a Bible, too betrayed by now God will strike me down. I can not read a love story, such a jerk and heart broken, I may not even cry. I can not search for love, so out-of-reach and late in life, people will just laugh at me.

I do have hope. Who with them as they live does not have hope? It's like saying I have a nose or a face. Hope, at least, is not like my pens. I can not lose it so easily. Bug me love of the past but I always hoped it worked and how crushed like hammered ice was I when it never worked out.

Do you want to know how it feels to watch the one you love pity you, with such a dreaded look on their face that they not only regret having ever met you but can not bring themselves to say more than two words to you?

Why did she never say she loved me back?

If I knew it in my heart, how do you bring yourself to cry, look the words are on the screen, yet I can not bring the tears. I remember them, they burn and they hurt as they leave your eyes and they make you not feel one bit better.

Her and me had a hand shake, that was our good bye. Good bye, then, no more tears over something so foolish. So unfair to not get a proper good bye sometimes. As I remember the warmth of summer, it gets dimmer that vision, how evil to have love grow dimmer because of something so nice.

Do you see California now? It is so evil. The girl from Virginia loved me back, that's all that I know. I never prompted her to say it back to me but she would have. The girl from California broke my heart and knew the whole time as she was doing it, turning ever so slowly, ever so torturously the wheel as I strapped to spiked chains, could only hear my heart scream.

Why do people not say they love you back, are they scared, them too, cowards or do they just not feel it? Oh, love, how I doubted you then.

But I see it in others. Other people say that they love each other. Perhaps, I live in some fictional world, where tears no longer matter. What matters then? Do feelings matter, are friendships even that important? They are the most important thing to me. How wrongly I believed all those years in high school and before then, getting good grades. No one ever told me it would amount to nothing. No one told me it would amount to me failing at writing and, worse, at love. Had someone said that good grades would make me a jerk and some know-it-all that only rambles on and on about love on lonely quiet Saturdays because he has no friends and every friend he knows dislikes him, I would have failed every class in that stupid class. Two D's? I would have begun such a collection of bad grades, one would have thought I forgot the rest of the alphabet.

I didn't get into a good school. I got into a battle academy for the brave but how brave am I now, regretting every decision of love I ever made? Ethical issues came up. Do I love or do I fight for my country. U.S.A. came first. I don't know how to separate my feelings; there were too many of them. It went too fast. It went like a flash. Who do I blame for that?

In any case, I hope you've had a good laugh. Laugh some more, then.

-10-

Does love even remember me? I can not fathom one day when I did not try and forget it. How do you forget it? Is it like this to descend into hell? How will I come out of there, spiraling out in the wings of some angel? How, if God has decided I am a fool. Perhaps, I should stay as I am. So many people suffer but you may laugh my friends. You, who are in love, don't look twice, don't think twice, just drink up and put a smile on your face. Sometimes they say, that's what I needed, a good laugh, to forget, to remember, but how do you forget?

Oh, so cruel you heart that you won't forget.

Do you feel them flowing freely, I'm not even drunken. I've quit drinking, as the beer would make me sentimental but now without the drink, I forget myself, remembering stupid things. I left her, or she left me or some stupid mistake with fries and drinks.

No. Now I remember. Her last words to me were not in the form of a hand shake. They were far worse, more driven to remorse, the reason why I write this. I must tell you and you must know, so that you won't make the same mistake or perhaps so that you would poke some fun at me, kick the jerk while he's so low. You need not kick so fiercely, friend, the bruise inside my heart won't heal with anything, thus the pain is never-ending as I tend to live. "Jose," she had told me, cutting me off, "I am married."

Thus, I heard no more. My hearing rendered numb.

And as the hero can not hear no more, so is the destiny of thee.

What more can I tell you that you would even consider hearing it in any case?

I am dumb.

Love is forever....but not quite forgiving...oh, stupid heart, forget already.

For those whose only thought was to make fun, forget me fast and have your fun. Those depressed with no one else to run to, nay, do not think that way. You can not be worse off than me, look, I've no feelings left on display. I'm a painting of empty space, what is there to see? The heart of that artistry is gone, throw it away, my friend or keep it to remind you not to make my mistakes.

To others who love me, as my family, I did not mean you. You will be in my heart as people I truly care about.

Yet, a man like me, who cares a lot, can only hope to regain his friends and be in love's favor once again, not looking back to ask why people never say they love you. Maybe, just having said it that once...to her...that's enough.

And enough is good enough.