to my second most popular lover of all time

(no, this post is not about bobby or phil or anyone dead. one more guess . . . )

i am summoning you. i am working my voodoo and i summon you, kid. show up. call me. find my number. call my sister and get it.

that won't happen. it's the same spell i've been casting for months now, calling out to him. be there when i get back. come outta the woodwork. please let me find you. i know you don't exactly want to be found, but i desperately want you found. all i need from you is one good night, i promise. one good conversation. i don't even need to play with you anymore. i miss the way you used to talk when you were on a really enjoyable roll. you knew how to torture me. i wish we'd been able to grow up together, wish i'd seen you develop. i am calling you back. return.

you affected me, and me only. none of my friends really know what you did to me. (simultaneously, they sense it.) visions of you visit me almost as often as the other ones that everyone knows so much about. i never let you break my heart, but i did love you a whole lot. and it's shitty the way i kicked you out of my life, i just didn't know what else to do at the time. i know your story even though you didn't tell it to me. i know she hit you, i know you miss your father and love him and hate him so very much. i know you're just a screwed up kid in a house full of women looking for a way out. i know how you hide, i know how you exploit the freaky parts of your upbringing so we don't ask what really happened. i'm sorry.

i always imagined you as someone else, in some tiny corner of my brain. in my picturings of you living a different life, they nurture your gifts. in my head we end up with a different story. anywhere but santa fe, you are a potential longterm boyfriend for me. you take copious black and whites of me. had you been raised anywhere else, anytown u.s.a., by slightly less freaky people, you'd be so average, gorgeous, and it would be perfect. you'd be normal and i would too. i picture you winning accolades in high school. working for the newspaper. i see your after school job. i know living in santa and having the freaky lives we all have is good for us, will make us better people in the long run. it's just hard sometimes. i know you're clawing your way out right now, but i wish the past were different for us.

please stop haunting me.