and to say that it's over,
means that it existed.

what we had wasn't love.

i wish we lived in the universe where you and i work out.

when i was younger,
i used to make these bucket lists.
in second grade we were learning about the fifty states and one day we were given a map of the united states.
we were to color the states that we had been to in red. and the states we wanted to go to were to be colored blue.
i distinctly remember having a map covered in a shade of the vast sea because for some reason back then i thought if i could see all these cool places i would better my person.  

i've been in many more than 50 states.
sadness. happiness. guilt. excitement. disgust. jealousy. frightenment. joy. exhaust. et cetera.
and a gross combination of each.
texas, rhode island, maine. those are all just divided in lines that different people claim they own. but in reality death is the only guarantee we have in life and that may seem crazy and some people may believe that they are immune to this curse. i'm here to assure you that you are going to die. and shortly after your name will never be found in mouths of people who once knew you but only be seen in past year books. and even then you'd be lucky to have your name recognized. along with your name, your possessions will no longer be known to you. the only thing you'll really ever have is yourself and i'm sorry for that.

it’s interesting to think about all the right people who might’ve come into your life at the wrong time.
but then again,
i often wonder if time could’ve saved or wrecked us at all.
maybe from the start, we were destined to be nothing more than strangers.
even if i had been weighed down, glued to one spot,
nomadic tensions silenced,
it seems likely that, still, our friendly smiles and cordial jokes would’ve been
limited, somehow,
by unseen barriers,
by the cruel overseer that is fate.

i think i meant something to you, once.
not a lot, but something.
and now,
now i’m just there.
a solid. something that takes up space.
you still sit close to me,
but not as close as you did when we first met.

and i wonder, sometimes, if i did something wrong,
if there was something i could’ve done, or not done, to change things,
to make things better,
to stop us from drifting silently onto the end of the growing list of tragedies my life’s friendships have been.

but maybe there was nothing i could do.
that thought, while terrifying, is perhaps the most comforting one.
after all, it is better to be left helpless from the start than to be burdened with the knowledge that the stones you threw became part of the landslide.

i hope, maybe, that we can salvage what’s left,
perhaps even grow it into something better.
but somewhere inside, i know that’s fool’s talk.
i doubt i ever meant much to you, anyway.
i always was, and always will be, just another shadow,
another stranger,
another change of season.
i suppose i was your winter —
a barrage of snow and ice that danced in clumsily,
not bothering to think about what would happen once spring came.

i hope you’ll remember me when i’m gone.
even now, it’s nice to think that i cross your mind as much as you cross mine.
but my hopes seldom match my reality.

so, still, i am just another.
watching.
waiting.
being.
i am nothing, and in being nothing i suppose that i, too, am everything.

but i will never be your everything.

and i could say that i regret that,
but perhaps i’m still holding onto that last bit of hope.

always the optimist,
and yet even more so the pessimist.

i thought you might be both, too.
i thought we might find a way to complete one another,
much like how the land completes the sea.

but i suppose i am left the earth without its ocean,
the ground without its rain.

it’s a horrible thing, detachment.
my roots never quite find what they’re looking for in the soil.

i had just hoped you would be different.

(a.m.)

for a long time, we pretended you loved me too.

we can blame it on a lot of things. but no matter the circumstances, this is how things are; this is who i am. whether you accept me for that is your own problem.