5:36 AM Idea

So, instead of sleeping like a normal person, I spent maybe twenty or so minutes last night going through this idea, and I thought why not post it. There are little flaws and it was quickly written through sleep deprivation, but I still like it in the morning so I suppose it's bloggable.

I met her on June 21st, the summer solstice. She had long legs and a freckled nose that I wanted to kiss but didn't because I was a scared, bumbling idiot. She said her name was Hannah even though it wasn't and I knew but I called her Hannah nonetheless. She slept on my couch for seven weeks during what she proclaimed to be her journey to find herself. She had stopped in six cities so far, and Milwaukee was where she had found me. I had cropped my hair, dyed it light auburn and wore stud earring because I thought it made me look tough, but it actually made me look 'butch'. She got off of a greyhound bus with a backpack, applying black cherry lip balm, and looked straight at me from across an iHop parking lot and thoroughly informed me so. You know, she was the first person to tell me what I knew, to not lie and say I looked fine but to tell the truth. That's the first thing I liked about her.
The second thing was when she told me she liked me in the dark while we overloaded the couch with our useless bodies, watching bad soap opera reruns while she smoked a cigarette while looking like the gawkiest person I had ever seen smoke a cigarette and seem to enjoy it. And I lived in Portland for three months.
Now, I'm going to cut the crap. I fell in love with her. I watched her walk out the door after seven weeks and I loved her still. I loved her when she greeted my dog with a robot voice and when she decided the couch wasn't comfortable enough so I woke up every morning with her curled up at my side and when she said to never tell anyone when she made me tea and kissed me on the mouth. I loved her when I knew she was leaving and I thought it was my fault and she took my face in her hands and told me it could never be. I loved her when she got angry that the wifi wasn't fast enough and when she got back on that greyhound bus. I was deluded into thinking I'd see her again. I thought I knew her. You know, the type of girl, the chameleon who can walk into anyone's life and relate to them on the deepest level, and yet never know who they themselves really are. She said nobody knew her. Nobody at all. And when she took that first step onto the bus, I could barely breath with this grip on my chest telling me it was the end. And I finally saw it. And then she was gone. And now she's gone forever. Her casket is underground while I still struggle to swim through the air.
AND IT'S MY FAULT
I LET IT HAPPEN
You can't uproot this type of guilt when it's this deep seeded, so buried in my core that I can no longer reach inside myself and tell it from what it has intertwined with.
Am I wrong to hate myself for her mistakes? I should have protected her. I never promised I would protect her, no one audibly expected me to.
But when you grow with a child from a sapling to an oak soothing the sky, your roots reach for each other and intertwine, indistinguishable, like my guilt in the summertime. When I remember the way that her face smoothed while she moved barefoot across the shag carpet. And when she told me I was the lucky one when she ran, and that she would be the one stuck with her faults, not me.
I got the news on the autumnal equinox that she had fallen in love in with a trucker in Tennessee who gave her the keys and led her right off a cliff. Maybe she ended up finding herself, in the end, but the Summer of Hannah will stick with me when my own journey gets too chilly or when I board a Greyhound Bus in June to figure out if I ever meant anything at all.