i. you said I was yours and I agreed
you asked me to say it and I did
I said you were mine and you agreed
I asked you to say it and you did

and now you’re not mine
but I’m still yours
and I can’t ask you to be mine
and you won’t ask me to be yours.

ii. where do you go when suddenly
the house, your metaphorical safety net, disappears into the air
the paper white walls disintegrate
and the honey hardwood floors melt away?

where do you go when that give and take
is suddenly all give and there is no
confirmation of payment, no package in the mail,
but I see you down the street with someone else,
exchanging P.O. box addresses and making plans to build your house
with something stronger than paper white walls and honey hardwood floors?

iii. move on, they say.
but how do you move on
when you don’t have yourself anymore?
you lost it in a sea of blue-grey eyes
and gently calloused hands
and a voice so melodic you’d melt.
you lost your name and your home
and you gave it away without a second thought.

You’re feeling depressed so you head home early.
Your mom asks if you’re okay the moment she sees you walk in the door. “Just tired,” you mutter half-heartedly.
Sooner or later, you start to believe it.
The “just tired”s build up slowly and quietly until you are legitimately fatigued.
You can’t sleep at night but you can’t bring yourself to get out of bed and do something productive in the morning. Your grades drop. A teacher eventually calls home. You start going in again, but you are reluctant enough to leave the sanctity of your bed each morning; school is another obstacle entirely. You scrape by with average grades. Your parents are just happy to see you “functioning” again.
You get a job. It *****, but the hours are decent and allow you plenty of time to sit alone at home. Eventually your minimally active drive begins to taper off. You stop trying hard; your manager notices. You eventually get demoted after being late one too many times.
You drag through the hours, watching other people move by in a blur, and you come to point where you stop in the middle of the freezer aisle with your shopping cart. (You can only bring yourself to make microwavable food these days.) The children in the seats of the other carts stare like they can tell something is amiss, something is different, perhaps your aura or your face or the way your clothes are hopelessly wrinkled. You can’t bring yourself to finish your shopping after that, so you leave your half-empty cart there in the middle of the aisle and walk back out to your car empty-handed.
This is your life, you think. This is your mediocre life. And you are tired of it.

sometimes I wonder if winter was your favorite season, too,
or if you would have preferred summer, or maybe autumn.
you never seemed like a spring person, though.

sometimes I wonder if maybe I had waited a little longer,
she would have changed her mind and we could've made it work.
it never seemed like she'd budge, though.

sometimes I wonder if you would have been understanding if I hadn't just left,
or if you would have shut down and broken my heart just like I was doing to yours.
you never seemed to be the type to do so, though.

sometimes I wonder if you even regret letting me go,
if you miss being entwined in bed or watching me scramble eggs on skype.
you never seemed like one to let memories go, though.

I wonder if things were ever as they seemed
or if I deluded myself into thinking they were so.

you’re not
hot summer evenings,
brisk fall mornings,
rainy winter afternoons,
or warm spring nights.
you’re not
the mystery boy in coffeeshops,
the faux prince in a fairytale,
the storm, the calm before it, or the disaster after it.
you’re not some metaphor for loneliness
or some simile for fulfillment.

you are, however,
the messages on my voicemail,
the last voice I hear before I sleep,
and the whispered confessions over the phone that I cling to in my moments of need.
you’re working hands and a strong back,
a soft soprano and bright eyes,
a glowing smile and a watchful gaze.
you’re easily moved to tears and
you like staying up late as much as you like sleep and
you’re allergic to cats and got stuck as the middle child.

you are too good to exist,
but too real to not.

we are the children and we are not okay.

first is the child who dreams of flying away and seeing the world.
their hair is short and often wild and they alternate between fidgeting and serenity in the blink of an eye.
last wednesday, they wanted to hurl themselves off the vincent st thomas bridge so they could watch the port lights whizz by and boats cut across the dark, glassy water on the way down.

second is the child who dreams of a full kitchen and a house filled with books.
their cheeks are round and their eyes are big and they can spend hours sitting still and focused.
tonight, they wanted to be hit by a car so they wouldn’t have to finish the job themselves.

third is the child who dreams of people that love them and refuse to leave.
their eyes are the most brilliant blue you’ve ever seen and they carry themselves with a careful, learned grace.
last tuesday, they wanted to slice their arms open and bleed out on their bed, tainting the peter pan sheets with irony and hemoglobin.

fourth is the child who dreams of lazy days and warm beds and loving cats.
their body is bruised in a careless way and their shoulders are narrow and they only stop moving when they sleep.
last thursday, they wanted to purge their body of every ounce of food they had ingested and lock their bedroom door and cut off all contact with the outside world.

last is the child who ceased to dream.
their body is scarred and their bones weak and they haven’t moved in quite a while.
last friday, they tucked a gun under their chin, murmured a prayer with eyes turned heavenward, and yanked the trigger with a certain kind of finality that is only found at the end of books and at funerals.

you’re walking down the sidewalk with bare feet and the sky is red and overcast and it’s cold
you clutch your keys and phone closer to your chest and tuck into yourself, picking up the pace to get to your car faster
you feel inadequate and alone and as the heat seeps out through the soles of your feet into the concrete, you begin to feel numb
you can hardly breathe and the knots in your chest begin to tighten again
you were never good enough you were never deserving you will never be any of these things
you ache and you ache and you wish things were different but they’re not and all you can stand to do is get into your car and drive away
and you hope that wherever you end up, the skies aren’t red at night and boys have brown eyes, not blue, and you never wake up in a cold bed with a feverish desire to run away

you are a devil and an angel and everything in between
you're a meteor hurtling across the sky and the person in a restaurant making a scene
you are a banker dropping some coins into a homeless man's hat and the **** with the skateboard who nearly knocks him over in the same breath
you have a sweet disposition and eyes that gleam
but you turn around and snap like a wild animal that's been freed.

you draw the attention of masses like moths to a flame
and honestly, it's a real shame
that you can't be more middle of the road
but I guess that's just how these sorts of things go.