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The outline of your hat is visible before I can decipher the rest of your figure standing slumped against the night air, hands in your pockets. In the middle of a tornado I suspect you'd stand the same way-- looking defeated, waiting for the whirlwind around you to slow down to your speed. What did she do to you? I think to myself, and then realize how incredibly foolish I sound. You were in love, you still are. Her fingers linger on you still, pulling strings like a puppet master. I wonder if this is how Will stood after we broke up, looking hopefully but distantly at my figure as I walk.

A late night phone conversation comes to mind, my fingers shaking with anger as I try to spark some sort of movement in him.
"Do something! Stop standing around, waiting for life to move on, Will. It's moving on. You're not moving with it."
A pause, deep breath. I can feel the fatigue in his voice,
"I can't. I try and I can't. Every time I talk to a girl I think about you. None of them even compare to you, and none of them are what I want so why should I move on?"
"Because. Life keeps going. I'm over it. It's been too long, and I've changed with life. You have to do that also. You can't keep living in the past."

Your camouflage hat nods at me when I get close enough. Let's sit down, you say, and I oblige because I don't know what else I would do. I'd love to make you run a marathon at this moment just to liven you up. You told me she left you for a country boy from my hometown. I remember his babyface, stocky stature loping through the school halls, the big truck he drove to school every day, old cutoff shirts that exposed a farmer's tan during the right times of the year. The first time I rode in your car, you sang along to every song on a country music mixtape that's been replayed every time since. I saw the glaring sun in the window and that damn hat and knew this wasn't you.

"Ashley, I don't even know who I am anymore," Will says as we walk through Brownsburg on an especially dreary night.
"You'll figure it out. It takes a while, but you'll get there."
"You think so? I was so different before I met you, and then I changed myself entirely for you. I'm glad I changed, but I don't know whether to be the old me or the new me."

You are so good at talking. That's not a typical compliment, but you really are. I could sit with you for hours and talk about nothing and everything. I can practically see the fragmented pieces of your life, I wish I could help. But that's silly. Of course I can't help. It's early in the morning, and we've sat on the bench and laid on the playground and for a moment I got you to take the hat off. I can hear the alarms as soon as you reach to hug me:
"Ashley, I care about you."
I laugh, "No you don't! We've known each other what, two weeks? You hardly even know me. In the big picture, this will mean nothing to you."
"No. It's different. I feel a strong connection with you. I need someone to talk to about these things. Do I have anyone right now to talk to? Like, three people. I need you."
"No you don't. Here's how these things go. You need me, and in a couple of weeks when everything is better, you won't need me anymore."

And that's how all of these unnatural relationships end-- badly for me. I put my whole heart into something and come out with nothing except sacrifice. It's so common for me it's almost laughable. In fact, I can't even count on my fingers the number of times someone has said "I feel a strong connection with you". That's my cue to run away.

Here's what it is. I find a loose string and for whatever reason I try my hardest to thread it into my heart. Perhaps because I think it will be safe there, perhaps because I see things how they are and want to make them better, perhaps because I thrive on conflict, perhaps. And for a time, I am happy making this loose string happy. In the end, however, the string snakes its way out of my heart. Sometimes it's quick and painful, other times it's millimeter by millimeter. You might say, oh it's just a string. How painful can that be? But the pain adds up, really. It teaches me to never trust another, it builds a needlework of solitude.

I throw your hat off, laughing, knowing that you don't understand the significance.