I Never Said I Love You

by Maddie DePuy

I never said I didn’t love you because I thought I knew what love was before I knew what love was, I never said I didn’t love you because what I said was I love you, but what I meant was I wish I could. 

The first time you told me you loved me I said “why would you say that?” 

The second time you told me, 5 months later, I was wearing that red dress, the one my mom bought me at a boutique for a high school dance. I brought it with me to college because I loved it, November of Sophomore year, and still fit. 

The second time you told me you loved me I said “I love you too” but what I meant was “I want to love you too” and like my red dress I kept you for longer than I should have. 

And I did want to love you though, When you meet someone whose heart is a kaleidoscope of orange and kindness and green and adventure of course you’d want to love them, of course you wouldn’t want to crush the purity of it. Your purity was pure the way fire is, though, and if I had tried to crush it, it would have been more like a smoke out. I didn’t have the strength to smoke you out, at least not at first.

Two weeks after we met we were at the lake on the edge of campus. I remember the warmth of the bonfire against the ember-struck South Carolina sky, against my skin and my checked flannel shirt. Things were burning but I didn’t realize at that time what was dissolving into ash was my willingness to crush things. Orange and red and sand and night sky somehow was our formula, and I should have known that those things clash unless they are pure flame, but we wanted to be a flame and yet we were just sparks. 

And we spit off stars like lighters do, for two years and then that June, after we had broken up, when we let moonlight and sand and summer shandy shift us back in time. Here’s another thing I never said: I’m sorry for using you for comfort when I should have said goodnight. 

I think I meant to love you. But if we mean to do the things we never do, is it mean to mean to do them in the first place? I meant to love you and maybe I’m being too hard on myself but sometimes I feel all I did was bent your heart a little out of shape, I hope it’s been rended and mended back together now. 

And I think it has? I’ve watched you, the way we all watch our exes, from behind the glassy veneer of instagram, and I think you’ve watched me too? I moved to New York and fell in love, deeply and truly, with someone who made me realize what loving someone is. 

And what does loving someone mean? Is it odd to say you don’t know what loving someone means until you do? Is that fair? They say all is fair in love and war but you loved me and it wasn’t fair to you. I know that now, and I guess what I’m saying is I’m sorry that what I said was what should have been unsaid, what I didn’t say were the truest things.