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it's winter again and here we are, the same loop that caught me up in
your whirlwind last time now making home between your lungs as your head
rests against my shoulder and your face finds a place to nuzzle against my neck.
i wonder what's different as i watch your hand reach for mine and then i realize it's because
i learned to grow without you and grew without you from one long moon to the other.

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when i called you a sunbird, i didn't mean a phoenix,
even though i didn't know it then.
see, it's been an entire year and i've learned how to create and swallow flames whole and stomp on
the ashes and even though i'd scattered yours and wished for you to rise
from them before, now i wish i'd dug my heels in a little better and cast them all aside
for good, buried you too far that you wouldn't be able to find me again, dosed and
dosed and dosed until there was nothing left of the scuff-mark under an ocean.

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maybe i'm just bitter.
and some part of me loves it. it's a vicious part, who's still searching for that other half
and knowing now that it was never in your hands and even if it was, it's been passed off
and i won't find it with you.
great tragedies are written for stages of life, not the makeup of entire stories, and
i'm not about repetition. you already got your chapter.

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there will be days that i start purely about me and that will end purely about me.
regardless of anything, i vow now, that i will make sure of this.
i will find (an)other boy(s) to sleep beside, just sleep beside, and i will love it and you will
hate it and i will love them. i'll be looking at them like i looked at you and you
will look at your phone each time it buzzes and hope it's me and
i won't even think to text you.
i will be selfish, ******, and karma encourages and assures me so.

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i was willing to wait eternities.
i was willing to wade lava and tread air and hold my breath until you wanted but you chose to
snip the string that held me to your wrist and now i've found freedom in the sky and i feel
broken and torn and incomplete but infinite and i found all of this without you.
you're too impatient, and you keep wanting to 'prove to' me something you and i both know
doesn't exist. only children get mad for getting back what they'd already given out-
and i'm sorry that i'm not for not wanting to be with you.

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i wish you didn't love me now.

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i wish it wasn't so easy not to care.

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you took a half of me that i didn't know i'd ever notice was missing the second you looked in my eyes and said my name like you'd always known you'd become my greatest tragedy, because you already read from the script

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i was drawn in by your devil-may-care grin and blinded by an immediate want to be wanted


i fell in love with the way you forgot to be who you thought people expected you to be when you were with me


and when you were with me ( i could almost swear you loved me, too )

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maybe my confusion grew on the midnights you'd call me and ask me to come lay with you- just lay with you, like i was the only thing that scared away your demons


or maybe it came about when you pressed tears into my skin on a day that was supposed to be about me but ended up being about you and, honestly, i didn't even care what the day started for


either way,


i would've let every day be about you.

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you never apologized and, if i have forgiven you for anything else because you make me weak,


i will find a way to never forgive you for that

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i can assure you no woman will ever learn to cherish you like i did


i'll let you live hypothetically, though-

even if one did, i promise you she'd never be able to care about you like i would have if you'd have let me

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you birthed the meaning of two words for me in those winter months, words my father prayed i'd never have understood

i can sing songs of unrequited affection better than any skylark

and i'm learning to tack melody to a sonnet about healing better than any plant who's lost their sun

-

i wish i didn't miss you this much