In the end
what hurt the most
wasn't the confirmation
of how much he hated me.

It wasn't the verbal abuse
the words that linger
and haunt
causing pain all this time after.

It wasn't the emotional abuse
the neglect
or the cold heart
that cut
and left frost bitten scars
on my soul.

It wasn't the mental abuse
of how incompetent
how worthless
I am as a person
or how his voice still rings
in my head
trying to convince me
that I am not worthy of love.

What hurts the most is the hope.
Hope that he will change
Hope that he will heal
Hope that he will see me
for who I am
and not what he's tainted
and twisted
into the memory of.

The hope that
some small part of him
truly did love me
before
he aimed to destroy me.

Old wounds reopen
the pain
suffocating.
The conversation
between us is so small.
How can someone
I keep so close
be so far away?
Lost in physical form
but haunting
In spirit.
He's a ghost
and I'm just
a person
he never really knew.

Only one
intrusive memory
and I break.
Tears push forth
and fall
without permission
or warning.
My heart
begins to beat
with this
incurable ache.

I find him in stillness.
When the world's silent
When I finally find a moment
To stop
And pause everything.

The ache in my chest
Returning
When I stumble
On memories
On music
On the realization
That I miss him.

I beg my heart
Plead reasoning
Denouncing how it feels.
We don't belong together
We can't pull stars from the sky
We can't change fate.
He didn't want me
For better or for worse.
Why after all this time,
Does it still hurt?

I don't want to love him
Anymore...

I have knelt,
Knees to ground
And head bowed
before the fallen.
My decent slow,
And harrowing.
Leaving me
shattered
And no longer whole.  

I have held conviction,
In the faithless.  
Refusing to waiver,
Solidified by belief
In something that could,
And would,
Never be.  

Vigilant and coherent,
I witnessed myself break.
Pieces of me distorted,
Distributed along the floor.
My hands cut on jagged edges,
That I could not,  
And would not,
Be able to piece back together.
I am now,
a mosaic of who I once was.  

My world has ended
On more than one occasion.
Tears creating rivers,
To vast to cross
And so I drowned.
The internal conflict
Of whom I once was,
And who I am now,
coming into vision.
Consuming is the concept
Of whether I should be
proud,
Or ashamed of these things.

I wept an ocean and dared to drown, in the waves of yesterday. I lingered exhausted on its shore, but I knew I couldn't stay.

I walked a path of hardened stone, my boots torn and broken. I sealed my lips of secrets kept, horrors survived yet never spoken.

I held hope in tenacious hands, a flicker of flame that I could see. Pulling myself from darkened past, is this reflection really me?

I've swam so hard and traveled so far, to find this strength within my soul. I reach for a better tomorrow, the scars I bare now make me whole.

Patchwork shards put carefully in place, a mosaic that beats within my chest. Bent but never broken it drums, my feet keeping the rhythm on this quest.

Words I can't form cut my tongue,
leaving my red lips stained with heart.
I can't get over how he left me,
how my world crumbled,
utterly fell apart.

This new place echos in silence,
the minutes just endlessly tick away.
I would have given anything,
just to make him stay...

He was my favorite fascination,
I told him from the start.
Cupid's arrow cursed us both,
when it broke on hardened heart.

I don't know how to let him go,
but it destroys me deep inside.
All the secrets that I've swallowed,
how he still bends and breaks my pride.

All I've ever wanted
was for him to love me,
but years left and I suffered the most.
This man who's world is bleak and grey,
Still lights my way,
but he's now sincerely just a Ghost.