I miss Ben.
Twilight comes and the house quiets down and I stop coping, stop distracting. I can spend all day long telling myself he was being a creep and he lets his ego get in the way and he thinks he's invincible except when he doesn't and that I don't like him when he's like that because he's sweeter when he's not so sure of everything.
I could tell myself I'm moving on without him and will cross the bridge back to him if or when I ever see him again but let's face it. I'm not moving on, I'm standing perfectly still and a butterfly landed on the hood of my sweater and the sharp intake of breath from John when it happened told me everything I needed to know.
I passed him my phone. Take a picture, I pleaded. Hurry!
But in his quest to get the perfect shot the butterfly flew away.
Kind of like Ben. Try too hard to get him just right and he'll take flight, the grounded inebriated cocky pilot who lost his wings but oh that's okay, he still has that career, that stupid guitar and a head full of ideas for the next great hook that will never see the light of day and oh Jesus, I miss him.
I miss him so much. No one gets it, no one appreciates it. They just see my loyalties search and fumble for the next place to land, just like that butterfly. They see my intense history and penchant for revenge-affection and they see the love my boys openly exhibit and they assume that I don't care.
I was told not to care, not to waste any more time fretting and hoping and waiting but I'm standing here looking at my watch and I'm counting that it's day one of week four and I've had enough. I miss everything about Ben but most of all I miss his now. His in-the-moment. His smile. His hands. His stupid broken heart.
And yeah, I miss his big ego too.
I miss how rude he can be with his jokes and I miss how cool his skin feels. I miss seeing his fight play out in his eyes and I miss his boots in the middle of the floor and finding guitar picks in odd places like the sugar bowl, the soap dish and on the cat.
I miss his insistence on my doing whatever I need to do to be happy no matter what. It's permission, it's liberating, it works.
I miss his weirdness, his out-there opinions and his spur-of-the-moment food fights. I miss laughing. I miss falling asleep with my back pressed against his chest, a wall of bones and flesh with that matching broken heart keeping time with mine.
I wish he would call me. I wish he would write again. I wish he would just come home. I don't care if they haven't fixed him yet. I can fix him but no one has any faith in me either.
