Sleep evades me
The mind torments,
Replaying all the moments I should never have given to you
All the moments you never deserved.
This self-loathing makes me weary.

How could I have been this careless
Heart not survived such heavy rains
To throw itself recklessly
Into hurricanes
To throw caution to the wind
Despite everything I knew,
Reject all fears and trepidations
For you.

Sleep evades
And the mind torments
With how I let you see so much of me
The walls I reinforced with such conviction
Fell like they were built on sand,
Because I didn't see you coming
Because you seemed like a soft breeze
But the storm isn't any less ferocious
Just because it begins more gently
And you became everything you said you weren't
And everything I feared you'd be.

What happened to the promise last time
That this time
I'd save more me for me.
I hate that I battled this long and hard
To surrender to something
So unworthy.

This swimming against
The tide of my mind
Is exhausting.
Desperately fighting
To remind myself daily
Of the impossibility
Of us.
I can't find what's not in your heart.

When I was young   . .
   I ran with the mustangs
When I was young
   I climbed snow peaked mountains
When I was young . . .
   I swam across the rivers
When I was young . . .

When I was thirty  . . .
   I was first time married
When I was forty . . .
   I was a new father . . .
When I was fifty . . .
   I turned over a century

When I look back . . .
   I think of the rejection
When I think back . . .
   I see the sad in reflection
When I resign myself
   I see the ignorance and deception
When I look back . . .

When my time comes . . .
    I will walk in reception
When my time comes . .  
    It will be a new conception
When my time comes . . .
    There will be no fear of suggestion

But when will no longer matter then

Yet again
I try to make some sense of this
heartache
Spin the rejection into something poetic
Searching for melancholy romance in all the missing.
But it isn't romantic
And there isn't always sense to be found.
Sometimes it's just broken promises
And question marks
And heavy emptiness.
And these useless metaphors aren't enough -
They don't fill.
Sometimes nothing fills
The gaps and empty spaces left
When it all comes crashing down
When people disappoint
And people always disappoint.
These words don't know how to soothe
The anger I feel
At them
And at myself.
Sometimes there's nothing you can say
Or write
When your body aches with longing
And your mind tortures you
With all the wishing
For it to have been another way.
These pretty words
And this glorified hurt  
Don't make it any of it less true
I think I've always fought accepting
The tragedies I can't undo.

I watch you leave
And I am done with seeing backs.
Tired of handing my heart
To the hands of fragile spines
Who colour their lives within the confines of cowardice;
I watch you leave for the last time.

Reluctantly,
I exhale the part of me that became entwined with you.
I am worth more than anything that isn't sure
I am worth staying.

I arrived earth shattering
Nails in my heels
Ready to crack concrete
Unwilling to be moved
Feet firmly on the ground
With a stubborn dignified silence
Or a speech I'd rehearsed
For the past three years
Unsure of which I might need.
He sits down in front of me
Gaze avoiding
Looking as if he can already sense the bitterness
Already feel the heat
Of all the space between.
He orders something unfamiliar  
And I wonder if it tastes like regret
Finally drinking down the consequence
He poured for us both
All those years ago.
In his face I sense a shame
And I think I'm supposed to be smug
That this is supposed to be the retribution
I craved for so long
This meet -
Him, with his cup of bitter
Me, dealt a dose of sweet.
I'd always envisioned this was the time
I'd finally taste some vegence
But all that's here is bittersweet
Saturating the space around us
Like there's no way to divide.
He musters some courage to look at me
Green eyes pierce
Just as fiercely now as they did back then
Stare right through the pupils
To the insides of the girl
Who's heart he ripped from it's chest.
I can't even fight it
It so immediately burns through
All the pain
All this strength and all this healing
Every scrutinised thing
I'd spent the last three years dealing with
The never ending proverbial glue
I'd used to forge myself whole
Suddenly becomes redundant
These cracks shining through.
My feet are no longer steady
I've forgotten all that made me reborn
I was supposed to find my voice  
Salvage this final rise
With an opportunity to bask in integrity
And finally leave it behind.
Instead I am 22 again
Mesmorised
Stomach churning
He always did have the ability to melt the ice
I built myself on
Like no one else I've ever met.
I hold his gaze a little longer than I should
He reads my eyes like a familiar book
And I know this game
And how it ends
But my heart is thumping his name against my chest
So loudly
It drowns out all the memories and words
I've sat with every day since he left.

I purposefully forget to remind myself
That he's the worst idea I ever had
Because I'm staring at his lips
And all I can think about
Is how much I want them on mine.

His mouth always did taste like hope.