Meet You On The Top Of The Empire State Building

You changed. Oh, not very much, and probably nobody else

would have noticed, but I’m not anybody else. Well, I thought… 

And not that I was looking for it, but when it is just you and me,

it’s not hard to notice. I know you intimately, I have for, oh

it’s been 20 years, this year, and in 20 years I’ve got to know you well.

I know your foibles and I know your joys. I know what you like 

and what you don’t. Oh yes, they are easy to spot, any change in them. 

Well…

We like the same things, you and me, and that is why you like me, 

and I like you. People and parties are not really our thing, 

oh yes sometimes, of course, when we go hand in hand, when you

are with me, and I am with you, that is what you used to like, too. 

Me and you. 

We’d bitch about the same things, and eschew the other things, and we’d make each other laugh with our very own brand of pig headedness. You and me. 

And there was change in those things, you wanted to go to the things we both used to point at and laugh. You wanted to mix with people at work do’s. Really? You stopped sharing the boring phone calls you had. Not that I ever wanted you too, share, but you would, anyway, and we’d both laugh, together. 

And then you’d be gone and you’d offer no explanation, where you once told me everything, even the inconsequential bits. And I found myself wondering where you were, where I never had to wonder in the past where you were.

And, I guessed, you didn’t notice you changing because it was all exciting and new, for you. And I wouldn’t have begrudged you any of that, excitement, I’d be happy for you, if you told me, and I knew. It was still you and me, then, of course.

But you just left me sitting there on my own, alone, as though it didn’t matter, like you’d moved on and you just forgot to tell me, like you forgot to leave, like you’d changed and you’d forgotten to let me know.

Did you think I wouldn’t notice?