I want to know whywhywhywhy did he flush our friendship down the drain.
What I mean is, whywhywhywhy don't you love me?
We sit down with our coffees.
I cannot remember who paid. I think I did. Why? You hurt me, I pay for your coffee? I remember feeling awkward, feeling bad. I want you to like me. I hope, maybe, if I pay for your coffee, you'll pay for mine another time… You'll want to see me again.
You'll want to have coffee with me.
Again.

I don't know that yet, but we only have coffee once more after that, months later. We do not talk about anything in particular. It will break my heart again. But I will get back up. I will gather my heart and let it grow stronger. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

When we sit down, I realize I made a mistake.
You do not want to be there.
I am on the defensive. Afraid.
I have been burned by you, and I do not know why I hope you won't try to burn me again.

This coffee talk leads nowhere.
I backtrack, I want to go forward but I backtrack and we talk nonsense for an hour.
Nothing that should be talked about is talked about. Everything stays hidden in the shadows, together we walk the 'enchanted' walk where everything is beautiful and everything is fine. The broken pavement where I lay my heart to die stays beneath the ashes of what-we-should-have-talked-about.  

We never talk about that coffee ever again.
I do not think either of us mind.
There are darker things buried in all of us.

Laying on the beach, we are a cluster of friends, learning about each other, taking in sunlight.
He takes out his book and she suggests he reads to us.
He does.
Each chapter, a new person starts to read.
I like looking at him.
I like when he looks at me.
Our eyes catch.
Let go… come back together.
We play the cat and mouse game.
I want to be caught.
I want him to catch me when I fall.
In the end, we build a sandcastle.
When the storm comes, it is destroyed.
But I do not stay until it breaks.
I think we are undestructible.
I do not know the future.
Not yet.

Ghost
I'd never known what it meant to be one
Until I saw
You
Wearing your dead boyfriend's shirt.
I thought nothing of you then
But love has a funny way of bringing people together
And that is how, two months later
I thought to myself, "I will marry her someday"
Fast foward two months later
I forgot everything I thought of you then, maybe the most important, the Ghost part.
and your skin
So pale,
and your attitude
Hot and cold,
and I think
Who am I in love with?
How do you have so many personnalities?
Do I love the pre-dead boyfriend version you get to be on Good Days?
Do I love the broken up version that sleeps in his unwashed sheets?
And then.
I see you lying on his grave, murmuring things like you did to me
And I
B
R
E
A
K
You were never in love with me?
You were always in love with him?
I was never my own person?
I stood in place of the person you wanted alive
Buried 6 feet under.
And I remembered.
You are a ghost.
You died with him.
You died four months ago.
Funny how a ghost can look so human.
How can a ghost Break a Human Heart so Thoroughly?

I thought you would be my home
I thought you would build the
Foundations
I thought you were the
Foundations
I look at my mother and smell the smoke
See the soot on her skin and the burned soul
But
Mother never told me
"Carve pieces out of yourself
And build your own home
Do not, I repeat,
Do not
Carve pieces out of other people
They'll want them back
They'll leave your house
Shaking
They will take the foundations
Away
From your house
And you will reach into your pocket
Find the matches I gave you
That you always swore you wouldn't have to use
And you will
Light
Your
House
On
Fire.
Never carves pieces out of someone
To build your own paradise
They can only provide
Temporary shelter"