You say you want to know me
What happens when you find out who I am?

Half of my stupid brain can
Logic it out,
How we got here.
The other
Half
Is ruthlessly sad.

Do you still read these?
Am I writing to you, or just for you?

How are you so far gone,
But still residing so persistently
In my head?

How can my heart hold so much fury
And so much pain
And so much hope?

Your words....
Your texts. It sounded like you're re-writing our history.
Could I have been there for you?
You told me not to be there.
You told me to get out.
I didn't want to.
But I listened,
I wanted to respect you.
Your message has me feeling like
Once again
I should've fought harder.

But no
That would not have ended well for either of us.

The truth of the matter is
That you've tied me to your divorce
Whether you know it or not
And I will never be able to cut that tether.
No matter how much I still love you,
You'll probably never see me without seeing that pain.

****.
I need to stop reading your months-old words.
They don't apply, here, anymore.

N: how did you know?

M: she wants her lifeless body dealt with the same way I do - her useful bits given to those who need it, the rest returned to the earth. in the form of a tree.

N: you base this **** on things after death?

M: well....she also wants to live the same way I do. similar enough ideals for cohesion, with enough difference for intrigue and growth. we have a lot to work on but...she feels like the home I want to work on it all in.

I want to reach back out
But I don't even know what I'd say.
Don't know how to not scare you away.

My heart still crunches when I think about you. Your imprint has not faded. Not clearly, nor fully. Will you ever know how close we were?

I feel like I
Lived a thousand lifetimes with you.
Yet we are apart, and
Have been
For a while.

Do you think in another plane
Our trajectory continued?

We all had to be a little selfish.
Is it our fault that
It was the end of Us?

It's sad that
These days it seems no one can hear
Past the screaming inside their own
Head.

I don't know how to forget to
Look at your
Horoscope.

I have not fallen out of love with you
Or even us.
I have fallen out of love with myself.

We are born
Whole, and empty
We die
Broken
Repaired
Shattered
Stitched
Darkened
Enlightened
Sliced
Scarred
And full.

I would lick your sweat off you just
So I could taste your salt

You've told me a story
But
Would you tell it again?
I was too wrapped up in how
Your tongue teased the air,
Your lips hugged the vowels,
Your teeth bit the consonants,
And your jaw drove the rhythm
To hear what you were saying.

Sometimes minds change and
Forever
Isn't always eternal.

But I have felt your heart
And she is very much alive.

I wish I could hold you like
Songs hold memories
Plants hold light
Stars hold wonder
Hands hold hands
Eyes hold contact

How do you mourn something
You never had?

At every stage -
Every step you took towards a more serious relationship -
I wondered
If you were telling me because you still wanted me
To say
"No.
Not with her.
I still want you."

But who am I to say such things
When you could be happy

Some people drink
To numb.
I drink
To let myself feel.

How lovely
That as the air chills and
Turns in on itself
The world lights herself on fire
In hues of warmth and tones of comfort.

Do you ever think of me
While you do the exact things we used to do
With someone new?

I want to write you and say
That I've never stopped loving you.
I want to write you and demand that you see me so that
I can see that
The love I have for you now is stuck.
Is the love that I had for you
The last time I saw you
The last time you saw me
The last time we kissed.
I want this to be over.
I want to know that I can stop writing
About how I can't let this idea go.
The ship has sunk and
Part of me watched it go from the safety of shore but
Part of me is still inside of it
Sitting
Comfortably, albiet a little fidgety,
Listening to the clock tick tocking away my years,
My loves,
My partners,
Envisioning that one day you'll come scuba diving down
Down
Down
To find me here, where we both know I've been
Waiting.

I want to write you and say
That I've never stopped loving you.
Maybe putting the message in a bottle
Releasing it into the water that surrounds me
And watching where it floats to
Will set me free from this sunken ship too.

Like a sunflower
Turning its head to follow the sun
I turn my gaze
Across this world
To follow the smiles

I'm worried.
Concerned because
It seems our definitions of
Forever
Are different now
Where once they were
The same.

Once
"Forever" meant until humans went
Extinct.
Now I fret.
It seems
You've actually done it.
You've moved on.
And
I'm still here.
Even though you told me not to be.



Will I always be?

Up to this point it felt like
Even thinking about this abandoned lake
Would create sound waves that would
Disturb the ozone.
Now I'm left wondering
If your tone of voice is
The equivalent of dipping my toe in and
Realizing the ripples I see are
From two peoples' toes.

I gave myself completely to someone
Once.
She saw my soul and she knew who I was.
And she left
From irrevocable and unintentional
Pain.

I have spent the time since then
Not only trying to remember who I am
But also trying to figure out what love is
If not just a tool
To hurt each other.

You didn't fight for me

In your den, late one night
With no music,
You asked me to slow dance.
I didn't realize,
I should've known,
That was you asking
Me
To take it slow.
I was too busy
Falling for you.

You feel like a song that
I grew up knowing and loving
But haven't heard in years.
I can remember every word
If you give me a chance.

If we find ourselves disappointed
It means we wanted more.
If you admit to being disappointed
You admit to having wanted.
If I've disappointed you
Will you say it?
Will you say that you want me?

Every story you live
Is your story.
Every story you live
Doesn't have to be
Epic
To be told.

You kiss me and I
Feel you running through my bones like
The chill you get during a summer storm
When you're standing on the porch watching the lightning and
the Pouring
Rain and
The air is warm but the cold mist
Brushes across your skin.
Every hair on my body and even my *******
React.

I am not emotionally grounded
And no part of you is "safe" for me.

The feelings I had with you
Are tattooed into me far
Deeper
Than the ink on my skin
Can ever go.

Many years ago you called me ephemeral.
To this day I don't know if it was a compliment.

How could you tell me I'll always be your
One who got away
When I was sitting here
Wanting you?

When your brain knows an edge isn't safe
How do you tell your heart to back away?

Getting to know you has been a
Slow burn
Warm, glorious, steady but a little bit uncertain.
But I worry that the cord that's burning
Is a fuse
And soon you'll blow my world apart
For better
Or for worse.

I'm from the South, see,
So I spent my childhood in a church and,
Though I may not know much about religion,
Through the years I
Learned some things.

I want to worship your body
Like the men and women raising their
Thanks to the Lord on a Sunday morning
Until I've got you murmuring
"Hallelujah..."

You ask me
"What does it feel like
To sit around waiting for the person who you know is going to hurt you
To go ahead and get on with it?"

Have you ever tried to pretend your heart
Is a pebble at the bottom of a fast flowing river,
Cold?
Have you ever imagined it as the backside of the mirror
Where you stare yourself in the eyes
Trying to talk yourself back up,
Hard
Reflective
Insincere?
Have you ever thought what it would be like
To be the darkest part of the mountainscape
In that painting in your living room
Where you sit on your couch
Taking breaths,
Distant
But so so here.
And real.
And aching.
And bleeding.
Have you ever tried to control the cosmos?

Her gaze naturally shifts to the clear blue skies.
Is that how her eyes found mine?

I had someone once.
Someone I'd give up dreams for.
Someone I'd think about kids for.
Someone for whom I'd change my forever.
I do not have her anymore
But now
In this fear that my forever
May be drastically changed
From some other power's volition.
In this terror that my body and my brain
May have turned against me.
In this land of unknowns
Of maybes
Of "we'll have to see"s
She is still the one I want to tell.
And the one who might not even care.

Three years later
I finally answered the phone.
The still recognizable voice of the 14.5 cigarettes a day that she's become said
"I'm sorry."
Nothing else.
We sat on the line in silence
For a time.
It was all I'd been wanting.

Once
When I was a kid
My dad and I were walking and
We turned down a street that had the setting sun
Directly in my eyes.
I asked my dad to curse it.
He told me
We can't do that, for
Without the sun
We'd cease to exist.

Now
I sometimes find myself wishing to curse you
And I find myself
Unable to do so.

If I'd never had you
I don't know who I'd be.

When I called my mom that night
Trying to decide if I wanted to spend forever
With
Or without you
I asked her
"Will I ever find someone who loves me the way she does?"
And she told me
"Maybe. Maybe not."
I made the greatest gamble that I've ever seen in my short life,
I put all my chips on another instead.
And for so long....
I won.
For so long, I was the champion.
The high roller.
The big bucks
We were the fire that kept the whole casino alight.

We've been put out now for longer than we officially burned
And I've come to accept that.
I've grown to love myself as myself
Without her by my side
But sometimes I still miss that heat.
And having felt it so hot
For so long,
Having had something
So uniquely us,
Now I wonder for real
If I'll ever have something that can compare.
I'm unsure if I will
But then,
The gambler's role is to take chances.

It is time
For me to do unto you
What you've done for me.
For me to stop making you a priority.

It is time
For me to decide how I want to
Look upon the past
And what light
Or darkness
I want to carry forth
From here on out.

It is time
For me to look at myself
My fears
My flaws
My insecurities
My habits
My....

It is time
For me to remember that it hasn't always been like this
That I
Haven't always been like this.

It is time
For me to decide
Who I'm going to be.

The clock has been ticking
And I've been standing still.

The truer answer to your question is that I ask myself every day if I'm still in love with you, or if this is just the friend version of our sunlit love. There was a chunk of time where I was relatively certain I wasn't, but for now the jury is back out. And I'm so extremely glad that you're happy, and that you've found someone, and I know that this is why you aren't visiting, but this is part of why I want to visit. To see and to know, ya know? But regardless of these feelings that may or may not exist, I will always love you and I will always love us, in whatever form our relationship is at the moment. This isn't me asking for change and this isn't me asking for attention or trying to be melodramatic, and you don't even have to answer or acknowledge this, but you asked. And the truth is...this is my reality.

I spent so many suns searching for gods
So many moons searching for you.

After all this time
It turns out

You can't fall back on feelings
That are no longer there.

You have never been a rebound.
You've always been the original.
Everyone else is an 'after.'

Whenever I think of the phrase
"Thoughts fill my head"
I think of you
Because you're the only person for which
That's ever felt literally true.
Thoughts of you are akin to a sponge inside my brain,
Pushing out,
Swelling up,
Eradicating the possibility
For any further thought.


What's more
It feels warm,
This fullness in my head.


As if anyone could've told me,
But I wish someone would've said,
That when you find the one
Who makes you feel like this



Keep her



Or for the rest of your life



You'll miss her.

You used to go on and on
About how I was always so **** cheerful in the mornings and I
Told you over and over again that it was only because
I was waking up next to you and that's
Proven to be true.

I was able to run away from this pain for so long but then
I blew out my knee and stopped running and
It caught up to me.

The fact that you have to ask
If I'm happy
Shows you don't get where I am
And that we've never been on the same page.
I don't know why I'm still here.

When did love
Cease to be enough?

Before....I couldn't afford to like you because
Part of me seemed to know
That liking you would mean giving you my everything
And I didn't have enough of me
To sustain us both.

I was doing so well
Holding myself upright
And then I tripped and fell
For you.