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 Jun 2015 Debby Greenwood
andrea
I saw you
On the train
You were immersed in the Sunday Times
Headline reading: Girl Missing for 17 years, Finally Found
I think to myself you are the dream come alive
This is the moment they promise in rom-coms
The outlandish answer to "how did you meet?"
I promise this time I will tap your striped-sweatered shoulder

Who am I kidding.
We were on a crowded bus, my hair
Plastered by the neighboring sweat
You
Nearly next to me, preoccupied, with your
Tiny little screen
As you stuff your hand in your low slung jeans
Pull out a stick of gum which you proceed to chew so loudly

Who am I kidding.
I gave you a sideways glance
June 7th
I find that sometimes it just seems like the right guy is so hard to find. Truly, romance is so, well... romanticized, these days. I wish there were simply more realistic expectations.
 Jun 2015 Debby Greenwood
Noah
I bought a new mattress today.
I guess that means I'm staying alive
For another eight to ten years, at least.
TBH
If a girl has stolen your heart,
try your hardest to steal hers.
11:57pm
I promised myself I’d get to sleep before midnight,
But her sweet scent
Illuminates a thousand memories in my mind.

Memories
Of her tender touch,
Her soft, gentle fingers
Intertwined with my own.

The way her glance would make my heart
Stop
Like the eye of a storm,
But race again once I was able to return the gaze.

I never thought I’d ever miss her
Stealing all the blankets.
Her kicking me in her sleep
like a rabid goat.

All it took was an admission
That I was in fact,
Wrong.

I just had to look into those blue pools of heaven,
and tell her:
How much I cherished our love,
How the sun wouldn’t rise if ever I was to lose her.

But I just had to win this argument.
I knew she wouldn’t leave.
This wasn’t going to be the tip of the iceberg.

Now I look coldly
Upon the remnants of our
Broken love
That surround me.

The darkness consumes not only the room,
but my soul.
The only light is the clock, turning over

11:58pm.
 Apr 2015 Debby Greenwood
a g
"all that i know is

i don't know how to be something you miss."*

taylor swift / last kiss
Platform four,
what am I waiting for?
one leap into space
and I press my hands to my face, only
to find I cannot go through with it,
another venue
another place,
one more track as if to say,
I'll try again.

If not now, then when?
maybe
platform three will do
another trackside
one more venue.

I take the sidelong view and I wonder,
who are you?
one eye on the steel
the other closed as if not to feel, as if
one eye looking is not real.

Each train I see comes slowly as if it knows me  as if it knows the form I take and on platform three, I am curiously
torn.
I break.
Each thought hits home and home is empty,
there's only me on platform three,
what am I waiting for?
 Apr 2015 Debby Greenwood
a g
it's 2 AM.  you're sitting on the floor of your kitchen wearing the last shirt that still carries his smell.  there's an empty ben and jerry's next to you, mascara smudged down your face and stained in your finger's prints.  

     anything, i'd do anything for this pain to simply subside.  i just want
            this pain to go away.  please.


when we have this pain laid heavily our hands, especially when it's all that's left of our relationship, we say we want it to dissipate, but i don't think we do.  i think we're lying to ourselves.  if we really wanted the pain to go away, we'd erase his voicemail, throw out the tshirt, delete all the text messages, hide the journal punctuated with his name.  we'd avoid every sappy love song and every break up song.  his name would fade a little with every action, every step in the direction away from the failure of that relationship.  

but this isn't what we do.

we sit in his tshirt.  we say his name over and over again between midnight sobs.  we reread and reread and reread every last text.  we listen to the voicemail with shaking hands and a shattering heart.  we listen to the songs we sang in the car with him.  

saying these things hurt doesn't even begin to explain it.  

it's like your heart is on steroids and you can feel it pumping 24/7,
like your whole body is pumping with the loss of him.  
it's like someone put magic contacts in your eyes, and you see his face, his smile, his essence everywhere, reminding you of all you lost.
imagine pouring lead into your veins; it's that kind of weight.
it's like someone took a highlighter to your life and is illuminating for you in the brightest yellow all the times he would have been there, as if you didn't already know.

if you've ever seen an apple dipped in liquid nitrogen and thrown on the ground, shattering into a trillion pieces, that is a very good visual for how this feels.

i think we hold onto pain so tightly because it validates our relationship, friendship, experience, or whatever it was that has caused it.  everything in you hurts because it happened; it wasn't in our heads or our fantasy or our dream.

it was real.

but it's over now.  the good memories, the good days, the good hugs, the good smiles, are fading more and more with every breath.  our pain is all we have.  we aren't over that relationship yet; we don't want to, we can't say goodbye to that person or the end to the story.  

we try to battle the inevitable fade.  we grasp tightly onto the pain.  we aren't going to feel loved or made special or pursued by that person anymore, all that's left is pain.  all we have left of him is pain.  so we take what we can get - or rather - what we've been given.

— The End —