today's horoscope: gemini: There's a time to berate yourself because of the way you've handled certain affairs of the heart, Gemini, but this isn't it. You need to make peace with the ghost of romance past so that you can put yourself clearly into the present. The sooner you do it, the better.

dear Old Crush,
i have got to get you out of my head. i have to stop dreaming about you, stop living in the "what if"s. what if i hadn't been too much in awe of you at the beginning? what if i hadn't been too much of a coward to say anything? what if you'd actually felt the same thing? because i'm fairly certain i'm never going to know what exactly you were thinking or feeling, when you said the things that made my knees turn gelatin. and i was never any good at the banter game. never able to decide what was real, and what sounded good at the time. when either of us was just making the best of mixed intentions.

i don't know what it is about you. that your ghost is still shacking up in my heart, when the others withered and fell away. why you keep showing up in my dreams. why you pop up whenever there's the slightest hint of interest in anyone else...my subconscious neuroses, or some form of dream wisdom? just as, in the beginning, i was never sure if you were genius or crazy. until i figured it out; that you were in some ways a little of each. but that underneath, you were an awful lot like me. covered with protective layers of nonsense like so much gauze. and sometimes the spark in your eyes caught the spark in mine and we laughed together without making a sound.

my dreams about you are taking on a pattern. this time it was that you were on a game show, and i was there. and you came and found me, and you kissed me and apologized for all the ways we've missed each other. and then you were supposed to be in a building that had been bombed. and i couldn't find you. and someone else managed to find you, where you were living with your girlfriend; where your lives were written on two sides of the same bedsheet. (literally. in print. which you left me to read when you disappeared.) and i drove away crying, and you came and found me. in the cheese section of the grocery store (hell at least i had the right section). and you told me that this would run its course, that you were meant to end up with me. that's when i wake up.

and i'm not sure that i want to know why we didn't work out, or whether we could have. because i regret enough as it is. because unless something suddenly changes and solidifies, i need to move away from the nebulous ways in which i keep prolonging this. i have to stop waiting for you to come to your senses. because maybe you already did, and maybe i'm just not in them.

i have got to stop. -beatpoetgrrl

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