Mindless.
Everything we've had, to you,
It was mindless.
It meant nothing.
But you didn't bother to even mention how you felt,
I guess because you didn't feel anything at all.

Effortless.
Everything I felt and said, to you,
It was effortless.
I gave you everything until I was left with nothing.
I was too scared to mention how I felt, because I was afraid,
Afraid you wouldn't feel the same way at all.

Flawless.
Everything I saw in you,
It was flawless.
I fell in love with the way the corners of your eyes crinkled up when you smiled.
In love with the way you saw life, your humor,
The way you drove me wild.

Obvious.
All the warnings and red flags,
They were obvious.
But I was too stubborn to let you go until we were left with nothing.
Now, I find myself here, telling you how I feel, always a moment too late.


Happiness.
I am thankful for every moment spent with you,
It was pure happiness.
You taught me to be free and to find positivity in everything I could see.
I could never regret all that you gave to me.

Images.
All that's left now of us,
They are images.
But these memories, call me crazy, I wouldn't trade them for anything.
If they are all that I have left of you, at least I am left with something.
Even though truly what you left behind, in the end, amounted to nothing.



But oh well, I guess it was probably for the best.

You
you walked into my life
unannounced yet so prominent and visible among the rest
and amongst all the unrest and panic and hazy smoke from ghosts of fiery emotions I could hear you, see you, understand you, feel you in my heart.... though I refused to admit it at the time.

I've become so numb due to the unforgivable things I've done
And I know you'll still hate me by the end of this
but I just wanted to say I'm sorry.
I'm in searing pain every night
but I'm getting better during the day.
It was you who always said
"pills won't take the aches away
pills won't make you feel okay
pills won't get you through the day,"
and you were right, because my antidepressant was YOU.
But when you, unlike the medication, decided to walk away
I turned to the orange bottle
because it remains constant,
it is the friend you never were,
it is the lover you would never be,
it doesn't make promises it can't keep,
and it doesn't make me wonder every waking moment of my life whether or not this day is the one it leaves me.
No, that day won't come.
But it did with you.

And now, as I drown in sorrow that floods my eyes like the happiness that used to flood the burning and gaping holes in my heart,
you unregretfully, unrelentlessly bask in the memories of the sunny summer days we spent in the park,
lying with him and to him, wearing nothing but the t-shirt I gave you so long ago.
Whether you proverbially or physically slapped me in the face, it doesn't matter, because either way I'm lying here shaking and in pain,
with hate in my heart, and regret pulsing out of my veins onto the raw skin of my wrists.
No, there can't be a new dawn,
I don't see a new day coming
but I know you do, and that kills me the most.
And after all of our love-and-war tug-of-war ******* is over and done,
contrary to previous belief, I wasn't your only one.
I wasn't your hero,
I let you down,
and you won't even talk to me long enough for me to apologize.

He is a tree swaying in a snowstorm in late autumn
A not-so-evergreen, with browning-red streaks all over his limbs.
Pushed around by the winds of the storm,
gasping for air and yearning for sun to give him the strength to stand,
only receiving more stress and pressure from sharp seasonal winds that seem to exist solely to shorten his year-round life.
Lack of oxygen and too many cuts leave pink, brown and yellow leaves on his limbs,
making him look out out of place among the rest.
The rest that evidently either don't care or just forget
that he once looked like them, acted like them, felt like them, but no more.
Of course there are always those that love the different ones,
sympathize, empathize, and emphasize the fact that beauty can exist in what is not conventionally beautiful.
But even the warmth from these good souls will often be diminished and become soulless when winter comes around.
A time in which one watches, with notches for eyes,
as the red and yellow and purple blotches that the select and wonderful few once loved decay and drain away.
He looks dead.
He acts dead.
He feels dead.
So he believes he is, indeed, dead.
And consequently, so does the rest of the world;
as it is a universal truth, it seems, that the way someone looks, and acts, and feels, determines what they are.
A fallacy; one that has caused the downfall and tragedy of humans and trees alike since the first man spoke and the first plant bloomed.
If a person is gone, it is best to forget and bury them, and if a tree looks dead, it is best to cut and burn it.
Of course, most trees tend to either stay green or spring back to life
after the dark days of winter, flourishing in the dog days of summer,
but every year it is a tree's biggest fear that he will be one of the black tragic few
who do not come back, due to being overshadowed by taller, fresher, better trees
that mother nature had more meticulously pruned.
No, his fear grew that he would never bloom,
he was one of the lesser ones,
outgrown and outmatched by those evergreens and ever-okays that needed less sun and love to carry on
intentionally blocking light from him, leaving only a few sadly relatable meek rays that cut through
the sharp pines like an even sharper knife.
They would shine down on him like a spotlight, or even better, a laser beam capable of lifting him up,
severing his roots to his past and bringing him up to face the public eye,
exposed and vulnerable to the judgement of his scraggly twigs for arms and thick trunk, leafless, better yet lifeless, a thing to behold in a depressingly pathetic light in the middle of the forest,
isolated and alone among a crowd of superiors, allowing any random passerby on a hike to look down on him in pity, as they learn what it is like to see something slowly, carefully, inevitably,

die.