It was cold on the day.  I wore black, but not on purpose.  I woke up that morning in the normal haze that surrounds me every morning.  I grabbed clothes that were clean and easy to throw on because I am not a morning person.  It took a year to realize the irony of it all.  We were married on June 5, 2010.  It was hot and humid.  I wore white.  We were divorced on February 9, 2015.  It was cold.  I wore black.  How cliche?

I am sitting on the stoop of my apartment building, smoking a cigarette and watching the sky.  Heavy, gray clouds lay low in the distance just above the horizon line.  Storm clouds.

When I see storm clouds, I think of you…

Boats, Corvettes, Volvos, Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell, “stupid-funny” movies, black dogs, Country Club vodka, Parliment cigarettes, Natty Light beer bottles, Axe body spray, bruises, white t-shirts, cargo pants, Quiznos, hamburgers plain with cheese, propane BBQ pits, falling snow, Tostino’s Party Pizzas, baseball games, hot tubs, red backpacks, Nike Air Jordans, any of the Kardashians, Macdonalds, 30 cent packs of gum, brown paper lunch bags, toothpicks, dimples, dog treats, lakes, rivers, toasted ravioli, bubble lamps, gobstoppers, bologna, Wavy Lays potato chips, broken doors, holes in walls, remote control helicopters, Red Bull and trains…remind me of you.

These thoughts are often stoic and fleeting, but you are still in them.  We spent ten years as a couple, ten important, growing years.  “Time” has permanently linked you to certain objects, places and ideas.  All of my memories from adolescence to adulthood are shared with you.  Even if you weren’t physically there, I will think of you as though you were, because you consumed so much of me for so long. 

Time now dilutes the feeling that once accompanied my thoughts of you, but time cannot erase all these thoughts and connections.

I imagine that years from now, I will be in a relationship.  I will be happy.  I will have a family, a house, a dog, a vegetable garden, a big yard and a picket fence.  I will be drinking a whiskey on the front porch of my house with my future significant other.  We’ll be enjoying the silence and sounds of nature.  A cool, fall breeze will blow through my hair, tickling my neck and giving me goosebumps.  I’ll hear chimes ringing with the wind, so I’ll look up to survey the sky above me.  I see billowing storm clouds approaching.  And I will think of you…

I accept that I will think of you.  There is nothing else I can do.

Happy one-year “Divorciversary,” baby.

I got you on my mind.

-Lou