It always surprises me when I somehow still shed tears for you.

I keep thinking it will be the last time. Then it happens again.

My mom prays for me a lot.
Which is good.
If there is a God up there, I know he’d listen to her more than me.
She deserves a direct line.

I keep cleaning up my apartment.
Thinking it will clean up my brain.

There surely must be some evolutionary benefit for me constantly assuming the best in people.

Like a snake shedding its skin all the old layers of me left in the tight spaces along my path.

Each layer gone reveals something brighter and shinier. Or was it the same amount of shine of that old layer when it was new?

Is it better or just different?

I subconsciously opened the calculator on my phone. Like I was going to take the sum of me.

I try very hard to be good.
At everything.

But often I just want to be happy.
Happiness often feels like the string of a balloon slipping from my fingers.
So close to being captured as I watch it flutter away into the sky.

Loving after you is like rewatching a stand up special. I feel obligated to laugh because the room is, but the jokes no longer feel funny.

Loving after you is like rereading a book. I already know all the good parts. I reread the lines but they do not bring the same feeling. Only the memory of how I felt the first time they leaped off the page.

Loving after you is like Wholefood’s peach cobbler. A ghostly whisper of another thing. A should be delight immediately compared to a better memory in my grandma’s kitchen. Making me miss the creaking wood floors and her presence even more as I wonder if it’s worth the calories.