My best year

1998 was my best year. It was the year I knew I was a woman and not a girl. I remember how it began, when I looked in the mirror and saw someone I didn't recognize. I decided to change. I read Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, and looked at art. Really looked at it. I met Bill, liked Bill, dumped Bill. I grew out my hair and found the wild woman inside. I grabbed my fork and knife to enjoy my delicious life.

Then I met up with him.
The Artist.
After all those years. Dressed in colors I cannot remember, smoking rolled cigarettes. I wanted to know him, to feel him, be in his skin. He took me to his house. Showed me his work. Ah, the art that spawned a million poems and dreams. I waited for him to move, to take me. Sweaty palms. A heart beating fast beneath my flesh. I waited for him. Waiting.
Waiting for his call, which never came.
Waiting for his touch. His voice. His laugh. His eyes.
The things he would say. That I was the only woman he'd ever love. Because I understood him in a way no one else could.
So young. So perfectly flawed. So complicated.
Yet I still waited.
He settled for a sorority girl named Jessica. A girl who would never know him, love him, understand him. Accept him in the ways I did. But she was convenient. Easy to manage. Because it was simpler to have the thing you despised than the thing you really wanted. The thing you needed most but were too afraid to admit that you did.
In 1998, my best year. I waited. Knowing I would forever want, forever wait.
For him.