I was never able to build up the courage to tell you that there are so many things you’re missing. I never told you because I always got so caught up in the silence, and the kisses and feeling of heat our bodies had the capacity to place between us. You were always the first one out of bed in the morning and it was always so hard for me to slip out of the comfort of your sheets. I remember watching you stare at yourself in the mirror with your fists clenched and it broke my heart that you couldn't even admire yourself the way I admired you. I guess its my fault for never saying that my affection for you ran deeper than my fingers on your skin and our intertwined legs. I always saw beyond the green in your eyes. I always heard more than the words that escaped your lips. The truth is, I saw you as a mass of broken pieces being glued just enough to keep you standing. I dreaded the days I’d walk in on you laying by the bathtub with an empty bottle in your hand and hope thrown up all over the tiled floor. If it was medicine you needed baby I could of been your anesthetic; but I never told you. The feeling you gave me was one that I've been drinking myself dead trying to replicate. If there’s a capacity on how much love a heart can hold, I have maximized it. I've torn myself open from seams that have been sealed so many times and I got my hands covered in blood so you could see how much I love you, but realize now that you only stared at me longer than a moment when my clothes were scattered on the floor. I've been convincing myself that our stories end with two different conclusions, that we've been taught love in a different language. You love with your eyes and your hands and I love with my mouth and my words. You've never been too good at letting anyone in, maybe that’s why it was so easy for you to walk out. I keep saying I’m done writing about you, but other than this there’s nothing more my fingers can spill. This isn't gonna end with goodbye, but rather see you in a moment; when I find you in the memories that to this day, I keep replaying in my mind.

I guess this is as real as it gets.
I stared at this blank page for a while trying to figure out how I wanted to express myself to you.
The easiest way to get my thoughts flowing was playing that Hedley song you once sang to me while we layed together on the black couch in my living room.
That couch isnt there anymore. Neither are you.
But it's that moment sits in my mind as though someone etched it there permanently and I can time travel back to that moment as soon as I hear the piano playing.
I remember how funny it was that you couldn't sing. But at the same time it was amazing that you remembered every lyric to that song and looked me in the eyes as if you meant every single word.
Ironic isn't it how it had to do with not letting me go.
Ironic that even if it sounded crazy, you were gone 2 months later.
I guess I should of seen your lose grip on my hands as a warning sign that you weren't staying,
I wasn't enough to make you stay and I guess that's why 6 months later I still lay in bed blaming myself.
They say if you love someone let them go and that seems like the most rediculous thing to me because I loved you more than I've ever loved anyone and watching you leave was just as hard as standing unarmed in the middle of a shooting range.
As pathetic as it is, I just want you to know. I want you to know how much I hate you for hurting me the way you did.
I hate you for consuming my thoughts everyday. I hate you for thinking its okay to make me fall so deeply and just leave as though I was nothing; as though we were nothing.
Ending a poem is probably the hardest part. I don't know how I want to leave you feeling.
I'll just say this; if love is what we had, then I want nothing to do with it because someone that loves you shouldn't be able to leave you feeling torn in the middle of the night, they shouldn't leave you wondering what they did wrong in order to not be enough for you. I shouldn't feel like love is something that isn't meant for me, and that's how I feel every ******* day.

I wonder if your mom was only sipping out the last drips from the bottle, to keep it away from the angry hands of your father.
I wonder if she slams the door as well, just to save him the trouble.
I wonder if she yells at the walls and buries her head where they meet, just so that he knows he isn't alone.
I wonder if she harms her own skin just so he doesn't have to.
I wonder if she tells herself she's worthless so he can save his breath.
I wonder if everyday, she breaks herself down so that he can feel like he's at least better than someone.
I ask myself often what you learnt from living in a house built up of dented walls and liquor stained floors.
I try to convince myself that you managed to build your own shelter, that you're different than them.
When you yell, I try to believe that you're just letting the sounds of your childhood escape your head.
When you punch the walls, I try to convince myself that your trying to make this new home a little more familiar.
When you bruise my skin I try to convince myself its because you don't want me to do it for you.
When you trip on your way up the stairs because of the alcohol in your veins I try to convince myself its because you don't like the way a full bottle looks on the kitchen counter.
When you turn away from me, I try to convince myself its because your scared to let me see you cry.
And after all this, when you tell me you love me; I try to convince myself that you really do.

Its 12:46 and I'm wondering if she's the one you're staying up late for. Does she fill your stomach with butterflies, like I did? Does her name sound so sweet it melts in your mouth when you say it? Does she graze your skin with her fingertips, like I did? Does the taste of her mouth get you drunk? Does she stare into your green eyes and melt into them, like I did? Does she point out when your lower lip trembles? Does she curl her fingers into yours, like I did? Do they fit just as perfectly? Does she kiss you deeply in the morning as she does in the night, like I did? Do her hips fit perfectly in your hands? Does she tell you how much you mean to her, like I did? Do you hesitate before saying it back? Does she smile at you from a distance, like I did? Does she bring you laughter even when she's gone? Does she love you as much as I did? Do you love her as you loved me?
Or did you never love me to begin with?...

Forcing thoughts to spill on a white page is like taking an empty pen and exepcting ink to leak art onto a white canvas. I've never been good at putting my thoughts into words, you've never been good at listening to what I didn't say. We were open books read by blind men, and music being played for the deaf. Never enough to satisfy, but always enough to appreciate. You dipped your dreams in sugar glaze and fed it to me on a sword, while I was busy cutting off pieces of my own with the same blade. Sometimes it's less about the meaning of words, and more about the look in your eye that comes with the sentence. Sometimes its less about the silence and more about what's filling the air. Sometimes its less about me, and more about what I could've been.

Stay.
I begged. I've never been too good at begging, but I fell onto my knees as though the floor was the only one listening and I shouted. Stay. The vibrations of your feet walking across the room to the door I always kept unlocked for anyone who wanted to step into this empty space, where memories of us hang on walls as though they're clutching to not hit rock bottom as I have. You always told me that I was enough, that I was the chain holding you onto me. That I was the abandoned swing set in the backyard that you never wanted to leave, but that was too damaged for you to love anymore. So you stare, as if nobody's there to get your eyes away. Maybe at the end of the day the arms of gravity loosened their pull and let you go but let me tell you, that was the day I realized there's nothing good in "goodbye" and there's nothing more that makes me cry than your back turned away from me; that's if we're not counting the promise of no return. Ever since that day the mirror reflects a melting puddle  of "wait for me, you're going too fast", it was a cry from the past of everyone who's stepped out and never acknowledged what they were leaving behind. The problem with goodbye is it's as real as the promise to love till goodbye isn't an option. It's the promise to drip morphine into your veins so the doctors don't have to tell me its time to let go, we're in this together. Till the last breath isn't the breath of you or me; but of us. Because what's it worth to live a forever without the person who gave you hope on forever in the first place? And what's the point in walking away on somebody who's still got your finger prints on the sides of their face? There are always stories that will go untold, but for now I'm re reading the the volumes of your chiseled frame and protruding lips like they were abandoned in the attic. They sat with first kisses and locked fingers for so long they need to be dusted off by the same hands years later. Yours are alive, and cut and rough. Mine are tired, and fragile and soft. To this day, they still fit perfectly into each other. I don't know why I wore out so early, why I no longer found the will in me to do the things we did as young lovers. I don't know why I'd spend my evenings on dusty couches while you'd beg me to come out with you and watch the sun like we did. I don't know why I stopped trying, I couldn't stop the constant crying caused by a fear of time running out. I don't know why I ever feared time in the first place. It always went so fast when I was with you but as long as I was with you everything was okay. Everything was rolling like the days the tide was pulled higher by the tugging moon. Our picnics on the sand always ended too soon but that was never a problem because we could run home in drenched clothes, have the fun of tearing them off each other and collapse naked into the warmth of clean sheets. All these memories I keep reminiscing. All the younger days I keep missing, the clocks keep ticking and I have lost the one I want to waste away the minutes with. I guess as an abandoned swing set its hard to say goodbye to the growing child. And as the melting puddle in the mirror its hard to look as yourself and smile. But nothings as hard as being the only lover in the hospital bed with none of your morphine in my veins, and no hands to hold onto. No final breath for both of us. Only the realization that the only good in this goodbye, is that I won't leave me with memories of us. It'll leave you with the memory of me, clutching onto the walls so they don't hit rock bottom as I have.

Open books with black covers containing stories never good enough to be read, words never long enough to contain the fragment of a thought. Maybe that's why I turn to putting my own in the complexity of poems, maybe that's why I'm never satisfied because I can never say what I mean. Sometimes I don't think you know what I mean, so if you haven't been able to read the between the lines; I miss you. I've been looking for so many ways to say it but none of them have been enough to make you come back. The thing about poetry is its never enough to make you feel the way I do. It'll never make you realize that ink seeps out of my pens with the purpose to make you feel something; but it never does. The thing about poetry is that you need to be empty to write it and that's why I learnt how to after you left. The shut door opened a new one which was the will to write about all the broken pieces of myself. The thing about poetry is it requires to see life through the eyes of things unspoken. Little do most know that mirrors and picture frames can speak novels of things forgotten which is me to you. The thing about poetry, is that I'm running out of things to say. I'm running out of words to spray on city walls, or carve in the wood of dying trees. The thing about poetry is that this isn't it. This is the goodbye, good luck. I have nothing more to bleed out for you, my mind is turning to dust. This is the last "I love you" I have left to write about, this is extended hands with empty palms.
This is the apology. It's me trying to feel something more than what I do, and as hard as I try to get there, I can swear that in nights of deafening silence I can still hear the sky screaming out your name.