Turning Point Promise

Sitting on your bathroom floor
watching you get ready.
The conversation lulls
I feel the sad familiar silence creep around us.
It settles on the yellow glow
of cheap lighting and outdated wallpaper.
My white bikini I love so much glows garishly;
its sunny assumption mocks our misery.
You feel the silence - the same in every language -
and sit down slowly on the tub.
You look down at me with that tortured sadness -
I have come to recognize it well.
It was a blankness if you didn't know him,
but a pained expression if you did.
The pain that comes with choosing
when there is a loss on both sides of the choice.
The blue that usually sparkles like pool water when the sun hides behind a cloud for a moment -
it sinks a little.
It turns a little gray and you can feel the chill
just as when the sun is covered and the shade hits your warm skin.
But unlike the sun,
this was a sadness we both knew would last.
You pull me up on your lap.

"lori"
"What?"
"Lori - look at me"
"What."
"Promise me something. Please?"
"Why? What?"
"Lori, I know you upset with me, but please look in my eyes."
"Ok! What?!" Fighting back tears has become a daily routine. "What?"
"You must promise me that you go away somewhere from here. Far away"
"Why?"
"Because, Lori, when you fly away, you find yourself. You find so much you didn't know before. Promise me, Lori."
"...but..."
"Promise."
"Ok, I promise."

It's been exactly 3 years since the moment that changed my life. And I think that I'll go home tonight and offer you a toast. For out of an emotional destruction that filled the walls of the little college bathroom rose the best experience of my life. I promised you I would run, and you did just that. Ran. I questioned a promise made to a ghost, and wondered why I should listen to someone who didn't care enough to take a risk for me. And then I decided that the promise wasn't for you. The risk wasn't for you. It was for me.