I cannot pinpoint at which time of day I miss you most-
It's too much like concentrating on threading a needle,
The night I manically fixed my dress to wear Christmas Eve....
But I do. Miss you in the dead of night, when my excuses die off and I admit that maybe I'm not alright.
I remember the nerves I battled and the steps I took to look attractive - to you - that Halloween party. And I remember you walking away.
I remember you threatening me, my laptop, my future, and both of us begging to stay.
Stay together. Stay trying. Even when we didn't fit.
They say only time can heal this wound,
But god I wish time would get on with it.

Because it wasn’t just a heartbreak, was it?
It was an apartment we fought and fretted over for so long, just to get it and furnish it together and organize and maintain it together, just so when each of us at two points in a night under police supervision split it up …. just for us to each see it ransacked by the other.. we both broke.
It was Ev standing by my side and pulling me close as I met cousins and Great aunts and uncles and….
It was that evening in the summer, that I shook his father’s hand and called the man ‘sir’.  …. way before I’d agreed I’d come back to the small town.
It was me scared to let a family in and him afraid to let someone in to his family. To be an attachment. A commitment from him.
He said I wasn’t accepting his family in enough. I was afraid of ******* it up.
Still they loved me and he tried.
And in the end, he was the one to say goodbye.

The only remaining scar is the one you caused,
Not any of the ones you couldn't bear before
It may have been incidental,
It still itches
Why did you leave, love?
Leave me in stitches?

Why do I feel he should be on whichever side I'm not facing,
Just a little out of reach
Why does trying to hate him hurt worse than my scar itches
And,
Why are we allowed to find such ill matches,
What do they teach

You. are not like the others.
You disrespect, and don't behave.
You don't let me forget you.
Like you have me, like I want to.
You believe the old west will never die
Just as I believed in you down to your last lie
At one point I should have listened to my mother-
But to this day I'd still protest you aren't like all the others.

To all we might have been and to our future un-met,
I'm still waiting for you, Everrett.

My chin was rested on my fist. Drunk. For the first time in months.
He and his sister and friends at the other side of the bar. Him completely drowned.
He came over and turned my chair around without warning, I tried to protest, made an undignified sound. But soon I was met with strong arms and a bear hug. Pulled up onto my toes and into his chest.
I bowed my face into his neck.
"What are you doing?" I asked, helpless.
"Just let me have this." He said.
I tried to protest, but instead he said, "marry me."
Shocked, I said, "You don't want to ask me that?"
Too easily, he said, "I do."
"You returned the ring." I countered, throat sore from trying not to cry as he held me tight, chin on my shoulder, eyes clamped shut.
"I'll buy another one."
Searching my mind for any reply- "Why"
And so simply, he returned, "I love you."
Back to despair, I whispered, "you're drunk."
And he shook his head, his nose tickling my hair, and said "come home with me."

come home ..

Liquid fire tastes cold, like you
Apple juice tastes like resentment and '*******'
And drinking either on a lukewarm weekday night
Is almost the same as waiting for our nightly fight
I only wish you'd understand, that you would have stayed
Long enough to understand at what length you'd misbehaved
But I had more patience than you, I suppose, and I think...
Well it doesn't matter now, so I'll drink. And drink.