Butterfly King

I was in love with you. Or at least, I was in love with the you I imagined, and with the me I pretended to be. I talked to you in my head as I walked around Rouen, as I sat in the laundromat, as I drank a bottle of wine alone and waited for an email, an instant message. I thought I would float away when I received the birthday gift you sent me. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with a handwritten love note inside the back cover. So you. So us. I must have read those words dozens of times. The postcard from Montreal was a cherished possession. My love for you was hopeless, but it helped me forget him. In France, the land of romance, I wasted for you. I listened to you sing. I closed my eyes and saw your smile, your rings of smoke, your hair. And I imagined you, and you were perfect. I remember you with two fingers raised, "peace," as you were driven away from le bateau ivre, as I walked back to numero neuf, rue des sapins. And I remember how horribly different it was when I left Canada. No smiles. No hugs. You weren't the boy I had invented. And I wasn't the me I had desperately wished to be. I wanted to go home and grieve the loss of an imaginary boy who had had your face, and an imaginary girl who had had mine. I have real love now, and security, and it's wonderful. But at times I'm nostalgic for my butterfly king, my party animal, my beautiful boy who, after all, only ever lived in my head. I was in love with you, and it was hopeless, and tragic, and beautiful.