You push and you pull
Like a rubber band
You say all the right things
But you don’t understand
Why I pull away
And want to hold your hand
You think I’m just free
But you don’t really know me
I’m not ready
To fall so hard
You keep coming
For pieces of my heart
I guess I’m enough
When you want me
But im not enough
When she’s on your mind

—

You stretch and recoil
Like a taught rubber band
Articulating perfect words
Failing to understand
You wonder why I retreat
While longing for your hand
You imagine I’m careless and free
Never truly seeing me

Unprepared to tumble, deep
Yet you persistently seek
Fragments of my heart
I seem enough when you desire
But falter in your eyes
When her shadow conspire

—

How many ways can I write this?

I stood there humbly with my head down
looking at my feet
I felt as you took me apart piece by piece
I patiently waited as you analyzed me.
I listened quietly while you told me all of the reasons I wasn’t good enough.
I listened when you told me you couldn’t respect me, my love.
I let you compare me to your ideas,
to the people you know.
I carried that hurt and I didn’t let it show.
I ****** up my pride and convinced myself that this is just what you need to do,
And one day you will see that I really was enough for you.

I realized I’m doing it again.
Holding hands with my childhood friend.
Every time I see you I am filled with anxiety.
As long as I love you, I will always bleed.

What is a night but a place to get lost? Lost somewhere in the dark. The darkest dark. You know the kind. (You do.) The kind where everything you’ve loved is no more, the last ember has burned out, the final flame is gone—a power surge that knocked an entire city out, the bottom of a well, sitting on a freshly dug grave and screaming until your lungs give out. That kind of dark.

Will they find me? Will he find me? Will he look for me? Has he looked for me? Has he even thought of me? Was he even real? Was he? Was I? Were we?

If he was, he is a ghost now. And he harbors all of the light. He holds it selfishly—a thief—who showed me his face, the one I could trace with my eyes closed. But I dare not touch. I dare not touch. I dare not touch.

We touched. I melted into him like a fallen candle, pieces of me everywhere.

His eyes—green, kind, nervously intense. The way his lips tightly spread across his face, with two exaggerated peaks. The softness of his pale skin. His pretentiously ******* parted hair. The hair he fiddled with, over and over, creating a part he was supposed to not part.

Can I fall asleep now and pretend his hands have interlaced with mine, one last time?

A solace sleep.

Dream sweet, my dear.

Dream sweet.

You wanted me to speak your name
And so i did
I spoke it soft, i spoke it sweet, i spoke it
In love
But it was never yours to give
Yet, you did
In the fragments you could
Pry away that needed safe keeping
And I cradled them each
Individually like
Infants without mothers
Needing the warmth of flesh upon flesh

She held her breath
And held her breath
And thought of him,
Left to gasp
For the thick, heavy air—
Air that sat still
Between them.

The short distance,
Within minutes,
But hours,
Days,
Weeks,
So far apart
From where we were,
Where we are,
Who you were.

I don’t know,
But you’re holding all
These pieces of the
Heart that I had taken
All of this time to piece back,
Back together.

And you hold it
In a scummy pawn shop,
Collecting the interest,
The interest I scrape together,
Just enough
To keep you holding them—
On a shelf in the clutter
Of your garage,
Mixed with everything you
Hold onto to discard
But can’t seem to part with.

She’s got your heart
With so much disdain,
Silencing your pain,
The subtle breaks
Behind music and sound
That drown the cracking out—
Like you did with me.

Still, I paint,
And in my visions,
On this blank canvas,
You’re all I see.

So I hold my breath
And gasp to breathe.

Let me go.
Let me free.