Dearest Old Love

Why do you have to mean trees to me? Rain? The moss and grass, and the dirt by the river? The crying in the car when you came out to see? Remember? Saving grace, the one who loved me away from my abuser? 

There's an empty field where you should be. I fill it with new loves. It seems then all is okay, my heart is full. I forget. I always did that to you. I am sorry. 

But, love flees. Only then I see you surround, my love, the wilderness, the crows, moose, and softly laid down fawns. You are the Foothills around the valley, and the Nechako River in spring.

Why do you have to mean getting lost on the trail and traversing rotting logs over the ravine? We could hear them building UNBC. Why do you have to smell like the earth, and cool fresh of autumn? Why do you have to remind me of a hug and a starlit dashboard wet with our delayed kisses? Floating to Fort George? Sitting in the old ice rink covered with pine cones, watching the trees whisper? Why? 

Why do you have to taste like coffee and cigarettes and smell like that leather in my car seats? Boston Pizza. Why do your eyes have to look at me that way over the counter where I worked (I felt you loved me then), haunting, leaving me at the end of that summer to go back to school saying you'd never have a family, that riches were all you were meant for and not this armpit of a city? Why do you mean wisdom? 

You have moved on. You won't talk to me. Probably a good thing? I loved you more than you'll ever know, and spent the years preceding your Greyhound bus south trying to bury you under new love, pregnancy, family. It didn't work. Still, despite all my trying, you come up. You come up when I am married. You come when I am alone, when I am down, when I am walking paths of gold, when I am void of thinking. You come. 

I can't seem to forget. I can't seem to leave you the way you've left me. 

You have always been the first, the best. None will ever have your eyes, your laugh, or your hands. None will be able to whisper my name back to me in the dim light of your bedroom in Victoria. (We met in front of the Parliament. Do you remember how you circled Queen Victoria out front, while I was on the back side at the smaller statue waiting? How I watched you go round and round for an hour, not realizing that handsome short haired man was you? -- I got married there). None will be able to hug me as we stood at the top of the castle overlooking the dark and stormy Pacific. We took the long winding road to get there, cutbacks and traffic. You took me to the naval academy, and we drank beer. Had a salmon pizza. We drove the rich parts and sang "Candle in the Wind" by Elton, dreamed a future. 

Irreplaceable love, none of them will ask me, at the end of the summer, why aren't we together? 

Why are we parting? 

None of them will look back at me today, smiling and happy, from your sister's picture of you and your new and beautiful family.

- Nichole Olson