You were tender kisses and soft touches.
You were neck kisses and premature I love you’s.
You were late night calls and me always wanting more.
You were bodies intertwined and almost getting caught in the back of my car.
You were the good morning texts I stopped getting.
You were walls being built no matter how hard I tried to climb them.
You were an endless stream of lies always telling me what you thought I wanted to hear but all I wanted was the truth.
You were “I’m going to do stupid things but I still love you”.
You were distant.
You were head over heels and then nothing at all.
You were two months of my life of me not feeling comfortable with myself.
You were the embrace I never wanted to end but the one I couldn’t seem to hold on to.
You were not supposed to be any of these things, but you were always surprising me with who you weren’t.

We said goodbye after what
felt like just moments after
we had said hello,
for even though months
had passed,
we had both always done
our best not to
share too much.

Although I have gone to great lengths
mastering how to be aloof,
in that moment I
regretted so much my inability
to emote.

"You make it seem so easy,"
he breathed,
his face welling with discontent,
and I kissed him on the cheek
as I whispered,
"I'm good at making things
look easy."

He had the sweetest demeanor,
and my body trembled
in the gentle strength and
aggressive tenderness with which
he kissed me,
a passionate, bittersweet
exchange, as we became aware
that it might be for the
last time.

I've become so good at
being alone that I had not
even pondered how I might
actually miss him
once he was gone.

I think my lack of visible reaction
hurt him, but I
couldn't bring myself to be
vulnerable, to let down
my guard and tell him
that knowing we were
parting ways made my
insides ache in the most
unexpected and terrifying way.

Maybe we weren't ever
meant to be anything;
that was my thought from
the jump.
But when he looked me in my eyes,
his heart was so pure,
and I yearned to touch
my soul to his.
I settled for combing my nails
through his curly hair
and murmuring sage words,
masking the things I refused
to feel.

He sent me on my way with
his favorite record, and I said
the most unscripted thing I ever had
to him,
that I'd always think of him
when it crackled and popped.

The kindness of what he extended to me,
the vulnerability I saw in his
beautiful, youthful eyes,
the way he softened his tough exterior,
it ate at me the whole drive home
as I cursed myself for being
so cold
and wishing I could kiss him
one last time.

I still haven't been able to
shed a tear, my heart too
frozen to thaw,
but as the Ray Charles
erupts from my speakers,
I stick to my word;
I think of him,
and I ponder on the possibilities
should we cross paths again.

Should that moment never come,
I can still find him
in the words of my poems
and hear him in the
rifts of his record, so I guess, for me,
it wasn't really
"goodbye."

I breathe in the smell of you,
And lose sense of place and time.
A drug that sold me into rehabilitation.

I know you're not what I need,
And you're not what I want.
A square peg for a rounded hole,
You don't fit my new form.

I wish you did.
I wish you would.

Intoxicated by the aroma of the past,
Incensed in innocence,
We both thought we needed to save each other.
Or were we just hallucinating?

Were we getting high on the fumes,
From our little hearts smoldering?
Or did it not hurt you,
When the flames began to spread?

I'm sick because I love that smell,
A smell that can ****,
And I wanted it to.

Breathe in,
Forget the tears that put it out.
Breathe out,
Remember her glow in the light.

Breathe in,
Forget your new identity
Breath out,
Remember her touch in the dark.

I breathe in the smell of you,
And lose sense of me and mine.
My drug that opens all the wrong doors,
And shuts all the right ones.

So I'll take another drag if you want me to,
And you can watch how I writhe.
I don't mind being on fire,
Just go to hell with me.

You've probably washed out every memory of us, of me.
It's as if I love a stranger.
But that's how it is now.
I'm only but a stranger to you.

I was the paper crane that you made. What once kept your interest. You thought that I was beautiful, a work of art.

But now you've disposed me like all the other crap that's useless to you now.

*******.

I was falling in love with someone who was falling out of love with me.