I remember the way you used to hold me, as we were both cuddled on my couch, watching re-runs of my favorite show. I would laugh too hard at a joke and you would just smile and wonder how you ended up there.

I remember the way my head felt laid in your lap, the way I hummed in appreciation as you wound your fingers in my hair, my mind slowly drifting in and out of consciousness. The sound of your breath created an equilibrium I only reached when with you.

I remember how upset I was when you woke me up to say goodbye.

I would exonerate myself, telling my mind that the scars across my heart were not his fault, he had no idea.

I remember your texts at 2 in the morning, explaining in full detail the purpose of your midnight snack mission, our arguments about which fast food joint held the best strawberry milkshake seem so distant.

I remember us, but now it just seems like just you, and just I.

Good morning's and good night's aren't blended together anymore, I wonder if the world will ever smell like you again.

I still relish in those moments, wondering if one of these days, you will call me in the middle of the night and tell me you're outside my front door, waiting for me to open it. That it's about to rain and you're afraid of getting wet because you need to be held and you can't stomach the thought of me catching a cold whilst engulfing you

(due to the icy drops falling from your hair and into my eyes. Silly you, those are called tears, and they've already made their home.)

But that's not who we are anymore, because you no longer send me texts telling me why you're driving around the city in the middle of the night, and we don't spend hours in each others arms anymore.

You've discovered the one thing I've managed to keep hidden. And as you hold it between your fingers like some sort of work of art, you begin to study the chips and bruises, wondering how I could let such destructive damage be done. But you cannot see that it is you who has caused it to bleed. Now your nails are digging too deep and your grasp is too firm. And as it pumps out what is left of the love I have for you, dripping off of your fingertips and burning a hole through the ground beneath us, I know it is over.

You aren't fighting for me anymore,
you never really were.

And waking up next to you sounds like sunshine,
the kind that dances across your eyelids in the mornings, and kisses you goodnight when the moon takes his shift.
The last sips of our now-cold coffee we share,
along with the boundless exchanges between us
will be cherished like photographs;
put away in place so we can relive them when desired.

I re-organized yours for you, they were getting messy.

I really love you.

As I try so hopelessly to wash his lingering scent out of my hair and off of my skin,
I realize that as I rub so vigorously over and over the surface of my body, its beginning to hurt.
But I cannot stop, I need him to leave.

I need to be 16 and not live for what is to come, but what is,
I rub harder.

I need to fall in love with movies and authors, not boys who are here today and not tomorrow,
I rub harder

My thoughts overflow with images of him, like some sort of broken faucet with missing handles, pouring in more than I can take.

I rub harder. I rub until I bleed, because that's sort of what this is all about.

The thought of leaving him is like getting your finger caught between the closet doors, or forgetting that you left your favorite book outside and coming to find the spring showers bled the words together.

And now, all that is left as I lift myself out of the soapy water, will be the red patched left on my skin.

Because hes no longer mine, maybe he never really was.