We haven't talked in weeks

Which doesn't mean we're broken up, because you have to be going out with somebody
Before they can break up with you, but I still have the taste of your lips on mine
So what does that mean?

3 weeks ago, when I began this hiatus incommunicado
I told myself I would talk to you again when it wouldn't be about making myself bleed
And I waited for my scars to fade enough to hold a ****** normal conversation

I’m still waiting

I once told you how bad I can make myself
How I can get trapped in that train of thought that leads to razors and scars
I was shaking because I was so far into it
Losing feeling, warmth, and control over my limbs far too rapidly
I always get cold when it hurts like this

I'm so cold I can see my breath on an 80 degree perfect day
But I refuse to find warmth in other people again

See I do this thing, and I know I do
Where I find somebody with such good inside them
Find somebody whose soul is somehow just so ******* beautiful
And then I destroy that

Don't believe me?

Look at each of my ex-boyfriends and my far-too-close friends
Observe that haunted look in their eyes
I've ruined them

You don't see it but you are so good
And I refuse to destroy that

I'm ****** up
There are days when each breath feels like a car crash
Which is ironic because the last time I was in a car crash
I couldn't really breathe for a week

I am crushed metal and crushed lungs
And you should know enough to run
So we haven't talked in weeks

Let’s hope it lasts

Its 2 am, I’m crying so hard I can’t breathe

I don’t want to remember the way you held me
After too long apart

I know that nothing is real anymore
It’s all just pretending
I’m pretending to be functional
And you’re pretending you won’t get tired of my unintentional games

This coffee is pretending it can wipe the sleep
from the back corners of my insomniac brain

In my mind’s eye I keep rereading your snapchat
You have yet to open my sarcastic reply
I have to be sarcastic in my replies to you

I’m afraid if I’m real
You will see how you can break me
Snap the last whole piece left in the cavern of my chest

I don’t want to be broken anymore

Its 2 am, I’m learning how to breathe through the pain
Of being alive when everything in me rebels against it

I’m learning how to live with the sound of my heart beat
In every moment, even though all I want is a bit of peace

Quiet, in the way I never want to be with you again

I am heavy
No that’s not me saying I’m fat
We won’t dive into those issues just yet
I mean I am a burden
You will want to lift
For whatever stupid unknown reason
But don’t make the same mistake of all the others
That came before you
I am heavy will weigh you down
and down
and
down
Until you can’t even feel you anymore
I will bury you
I will break you
and I won’t even apologize
I’ll just look at you
With big accusing eyes when you drop me
How could you let me bruise like that?
Never mind your broken bones and crushed lungs
My gaze will level a undeserved rock of guilt at you, for not carrying me well
I will not feel a thing

He had this book, his favorite book
Wrinkled with use so that’s it pretty burgundy and gold color scheme was faded
To a crease lined reddish brown and tan

I've forgotten the title, like I've forgotten so many things about him
Cast off memories like clothes
Because they stopped fitting around the hole in my chest
But I remember the look of this book
So well loved, over the many years he’d kept it

He was like that, Mr. Commitment
Ready to hold out for the long-term
Ready for a wife and a house and 2.5 kids with a white picket fence and family dog
I just wanted to run away from the horror show I’d always known
Because I’d been raised where love meant shouting, and heartbreak

Love meant my sister crawling into my bed at 3 am
After yet another fight over the phone
And eating only an apple for the next three days
Because to her dropping a dress size would make love her right

Love was tear stains on my pillow and broken bowls on the ground
As my mom and dad tore into one another for all that had gone wrong
Angry yelling echoing through the board game
That none of my siblings or I really cared to play anymore

But he didn't hold angry yelling, only overly excited shouts
He held me like the book, like he’d want me forever
But the book, as amazing as he’d claimed it to be
Had one page unmarked by the wear of his love
The last page sat unread
He said it was too good a book to ever finish
And this way he could read it again and again
Without any end

But he held me like he held the book
Knowing so much of me too well, from so many readings
Caring for every detail, from my obsession with elephants
To the exact time we first crossed the threshold of friendship, into something more
7:47 pm he showed up at my door at our first anniversary
I’d though he’d forgotten, he’d just wanted to get it right down to the last minute

He knew each of my chapters
Memorized paragraphs of me
To turn over and over it his heart, reading and rereading
Yet leaving one page unturned

I couldn't be an incomplete story
I needed my resolution

It’s 7:47 pm and I've never been more alone

I’ll love you as long as the sea is blue
I remember smiling and leaning into his arms
They anchored me to the world as we watched the waves crash on the shore
Ignoring the calls of the gulls and itch of the sand between my toes
I replied without thinking, just sure of the bond between us in a way
I’d never been sure of anything
Then I’ll love you as deep as the sea*
He smiled and hugged me a little tighter in reply
And I thought that I had found it
On the beach of my childhood, my true home
I started to believe in true love

The day we said good bye I drove to the beach
As my chest cracked itself open to pour out
Everything we had been
Into the storm of my tears and the wild wind that battered my car
When I got there the wind had whipped even the sand into a frothy fury
I found our place, by the little cove and fallen tree
It wasn't home without his arms around me

I watched the angry grey waves batter the sand
Overwhelmed by the complete expanse of churning water before me
The depths in the distance were nearly black and capped in lacy foam
As the brewing storm incited the sea
The ever deep stormy grey sea

I thought my heart broke then
but I couldn't be sure, it was with him
Instead, I drove home alone
Knowing only fools thought love could last

I thought our love was like the stars
Eternal immutable shining
I thought we’d have forever
Instead of bursting into phoenix flames again
Reborn back into the awkward
Cold friendship, I’d so hated sharing
I thought we could be like the stars
Absolute resolute perfect
I should have known that burning with passion
Like we did
Only leads to collapse
Instead of firebright stars
I’m left with an ice cold black hole in my gut
That reminds me constantly, we are not the stars
We are haphazard short-lived fickle
We are over

We have a checkered past
I call it a story,
Inevitability,
Or something beautiful
I don’t see it with your cold hazel eyes
I don’t dissect it into painful little bits
Trying to discern cause of death
As we’re lying entwined on a cold autopsy table
Before our heart beats have even had the chance to stop racing
I don’t believe it’s avoiding failure if we never try
I never have
You read our history like a eulogy
Citing each fight as a mortal wound
Recounting the tales
Over a mahogany coffin
Holding onto your love
Was like listening to a coroner’s report
Each “I love you” was a doctor, calling it
Was a DNR order
You are ready to dress in black
And call in a headstone engraving
With past tense dates
To bury everything
And just call it a mistake you had to make
But I am not an obituary