I am so tired of having to try so hard to make you happy, only to lose myself in the process.
If I cannot make you happy simply by breathing, perhaps I cannot make you happy at all.
palms to the sky
a patient sacrifice, i’m waiting for ink
to spill from my veins; to taste of something
other than you.because i haven’t kissed you
in over two months, and yet
you are still in my bloodstream
somehow.
because every fucking poem, every song,
every sunset is about you and
i’m sick of going to sleep
praying for relief from thoughts
of your eyes, only to see them
in my dreams.and i don’t understand how it’s fair that
you’re biting her bottom lip
the way i used to bite yours and not
thinking of me, and yet i am
hit with memories like rocks
to my temple,
sending my sandcastles
tumbling.
You were only
the second person
I understood how to love.
I was naive– I still hadn’t learned
that love isn’t
bleeding out onto the card table
and showing everyone your hand;
that in order to win,
you had to bluff.And I came in like a hurricane and
tore apart the small space
you had just started feeling like you could call home.
I asked for a room– you weren’t sure
you had any.But I made myself a copy
of your keys and slept
at the foot of your bed until
you finally started leaving
extra eggs in the frying pan for me
in the mornings.
But you never were one for routine.You were a runner,
you said. You didn’t like to stay still.
You could find home within yourself but
were too scared to rent out property
in anybody else.I told you I was looking
for a tenant.When I finally started making an indent
in your mattress,
you locked me out.‘It’s too risky,’ you said,
‘this real estate game.’
i’m in some sort
of fucked up purgatory.
dancing between
reaching for the phone and
reaching for my throat
because
it’s my fault you’re gone
it’s my fault i’m gone
but at least i’m not
on fire anymore.and i want to call you.
sometimes i go so far as to
hear the dial tone before i remember
i deleted your number
and never bothered to memorize it.
i never thought i’d need to.and sometimes i go so far as to
imagine what it would be like to have you
in my life again until
i remember how much it hurt
the first time around;
how heaven and hell were never meant to be
together because
that’s what being with you was and
it was a cycle so vicious
i couldn’t for the life of me tear myself away.but i did.
and in the process i lost
my skin from where
we were attached
at the hips.
the scar reminds me why i cannot go back.
because my hands might as well be ghosts,
the way they touch you.
because my lips are useless
if they never meet your skin.
because i will always love you,
and you
will always love someone else.
please don’t ever forget how much
i loved you.
please don’t think that because i’m gone
my love is, too.
please don’t think it stops
when my silhouette fades away.
please don’t think it doesn’t flow
just because my mouth is shut.
please understand that once
the seed is planted, it will always be
in my heart.
once i love you,
i cannot un-love you.
once i love you,
i will always love you.
please don’t forget.
please don’t think i don’t
care.
please understand that my flaw
is seeing you as perfectly imperfect.
my flaw is loving your
faults too much.
because you didn’t love mine,
and as i began falling deeper and deeper in love
with every flaw i discovered,
you were falling farther and farther out of it.
i loved you for all of you.
you loved me for parts of me.
Probably:
the guarantee
of a lukewarm promise that
may or may not be
broken.
Probably: like babbling
brooks and babies. Like
babbling on and on and on;
empty words
just to fill the space
you were so afraid
of.
Probably:
a thumbs up for empty air and
words that pop like bubbles.
A contract signed with
probably in the
fine print scares me.
As I curl into your back I whisper:
will you still love me in the morning?
Only the sticky air replies:
hopefully,
maybe,
probably.
thank god for hybrids, you’d said as you looked at me
and grinned the day
the gas prices climbed.
i can get 40 miles per gallon on this baby.
you could spend less money and
go further, and
you loved that.
you always were thrifty.
and now
i can’t help wishing that maybe
my heart was
a hybrid, too because
the more time that
goes by,
the less you hold
my hand;
the less you tell me you
love me
and i’m trying to
make us run with
less and less gas, but
i’m not sure how much
further we can
go.
Looking back, I’m thankful that you hurt me. If you hadn’t, I probably would have stayed.
When I left you, I was scared that I had left a part of me behind– the part that loved long hikes, exploring, deep talks, learning, and spontaneous day trips to small towns. I believed that you were part of what made me who I was, and if you weren’t in my life, I wouldn’t be adventurous or kind or spontaneous anymore. I didn’t see that all of that was already in me. I thought I needed you in order to love myself.
I could not see that everything I loved about you– all the things I loved doing with you– were already inside me. I didn’t need you. I don’t need you. Everything I was scared to lose about you, I’ve discovered in myself. It was there all along, it was just masked in our relationship. I don’t need you to be myself. I am me without you. I am the same without you.
That’s the funny thing about pain,” she said. “You suffer through it. And looking back, you’ll remember that you had it. But you’ll never be able to remember exactly how it felt– only how huge it seemed to be. You’ll remember that you were hurting, who hurt you, and how. But once you overcome the pain, your heart callouses. You won’t be able to feel the knives in your lungs anymore, or the way every word they said was a hammer to your ribcage. Eventually, it becomes a black and white memory of something you had experienced in color. And in some ways that is so beautiful,” she mused, “because it allows us to try again despite all we’ve been through.
Silenticel 