i didn't want to turn you into a poem
i didn't want you to be my muse
you've ruined my mind and my pen
you've made me blind to inspiration
i can't hold the pages still anymore
i can't understand my own writing 
your hair isn't a waterfall 
your eyes aren't deep oceans 
i'm not held here by your gravity
i'm not sure that your voice is music
you won't own me
i won't turn you into poetry

[holyoak]

i hope my shadow follows you through the rooms of your house
i hope my perfume lingers in your bedsheets and my naked body lingers in your mind
i hope that when you look at your backyard, that all you can see is the red hammock that we broke
and we laughed and laughed
i hope you sit in your living room and remember when i counted the fourteen fake candles. i hope you count them and find fourteen and remember when we kissed on the floor
i hope that blonde hairs litter your possessions. i hope that you find them on your clothes, in your car, in your room, for months after i've left
i don't want to be so easy to get rid of.
i hope my voice has stained all your family photos so that all you can see when you look at them is how cute i thought you were
i hope that the sight of your empty passenger seat physically pains you and i hope that every day you feel as if something important is missing
and i hope that that something important is me  
i hope your lips burn bitter with my aftertaste and your hands grow lonely just like your friday nights without me

i want you to miss me
even if you won't

3am and sometimes
i think the ceilings are split
from the weight of your
words, cold. last november.
but my lips
are cracked from the taste of
your
apologies, like wet ashes
on my tongue. tomorrow's cigarettes.
i pray to god
sometimes. i ask for one
more chance to remember how your smile looks like
on rainy yesterdays. brief thunderstorms.
i miss you.
your hands are sand
and i spend the entire time
trying to hold onto them but they slip
out, from the gaps between my fingers.
i feel as if i am chasing smoke.
i feel as if i am chasing you.
i am chasing you.
but i don't know where you've
gone, and not a single
navigating system in this world
could tell me where you are.
i break one.
i try to find another, but
the store says they're sold out.
outside, i find a pile of broken
ones by the trash can and lonely
silhouettes walking down the left side
of the crossroad.
because they know if they have to find someone,
they musn't go the right way.
3am and sometimes
i find myself brewing coffee
in the kitchen,
and i forget how many teaspoons of sugar
you'd always add to your cup.
so i don't touch the spoon.
3am and sometimes
i wish you taught
me how to forget you before
you left.
i brushed shoulders with you
the other day,
when the lights were green
and we were both crossing the road.
i don't
think you recognize me
anymore.

something snapped in me earlier this month
i think it was the bough that held most of what was rotten inside of me
but it could've just been the breath i was holding ever since the day i declared that your absence was never permanent, but i realized that this time it is
but this is not a poem about hoping that what goes up must come down, and what leaves you has to come back around
it's about how the clouds are looking more like laughing children
and i hear the birds in the morning without mourning you at the sight of an empty chair
i have found truth in a kind of beauty that has nothing to do with you

two weeks ago, all i thought about was what kind of person you have become and if they are anything like the person i fell in love with, but

if i've learned anything about love from you
it's that sometimes it means screaming until your voice shatters and other times it's found in silence
or growing out of old ways and apologizing despite only having fallen so hard, you left a crack in the cement

i've learned that the only reason anyone could ever replace me is because i left a hole big enough in their chest to need replacing
and by the end of it all, i got to laugh and cry and *** and be the truest, most human version of myself in the presence of someone else
i have a whole lifetime to do it all over again

i loved the things that you would do when you were you
that is enough for me