Choice

I wasn't sure if I had a choice. There was a choice to be made, I just wasn't sure if it was my choice to make. I left her. I took everything. Do I take her back? Does she want me back? Would she take me back? Do I want to go back? Does she have to make everything so poetic? I was going over the questions in my head driving back to the old apartment. If she had been anyone else, I wouldn't have gone back. If she had been a girl that bought ikea furniture and watched television I would have stayed in my white walled apartment and never looked back. But there I was, driving to my parents house in the middle of a freezing cold night because of an ambiguos poem writen on a door. I'm not sure what annoyed me more; the fact she wrote on the door, or the fact that she knew I was coming back. You can only hate someone that you love first. I was walking a fine line between the two. I hated her for assuming I was going to be weak enough to come back, but I loved her because I knew she wouldn't say I told you so when I got there. I didn't know though. I didn't know if we were going to be together, because I had left for a reason. I left because she didn't exsist sometimes, because she wrote on floors and walls, because I wasn't sure if she was going to be alive everday when I got home from work. I left because it felt like she never wanted me to touch her. The aspiring poet in my head was telling me that love conqures all. I hated that guy. I did love her, and it was enough. Now I wasn't so sure she was even going to be there. I could have misread the poem, maybe Ivy was going to wrap herself around a different stronger tree. That would be logical, move on, try again, maybe find a musician this time. Someone to make songs out of her poems. I sat in the drive way so filled with jealousy of a hippie guy that didn't exist, I almost didn't get out. I opened my door and walked to the gate around back, praying my parents were already asleep. Goddamn Ivy trying to make me tell them about things like this. She always thought it was funny that they didn't understand us. I was at the base of the tree and I could hear her breathing. She was there. I was right. But it wasn't going to be this easy. I had to be strong, I had to talk to her about things, tell her that things were going to be different. I couldn't let the fact that I couldn't sleep without her cloud my judgment. I was already so relaxed, just hearing her breathing, just knowing where she was and that she was safe and waiting for me. I climbed the ladder slowly trying to brace myself against her eyes.

She looked at me, exactly like she had the first night I ever set eyes on her, and I asked her what she was doing there in the sternest voice I could muster against her. She blinked slowly and said her name was Ivy, and would I please not tell anyone that she was there. I shook my head and promised her. I was just goddamned helpless against those eyes. Always have been and always will be.