"If I could paint a picture of how we used to be,
it would be a landscape of a field
with sunflowers that all look the exact same.
The exact same.
Over and over and over again."

Kissing him sounded like wailing sirens,
a traumatic experience already in motion

Your Dad was never around to teach you things
like riding a bike, or how to ask for the things you want
so you own a dirt bike now and steal for the thrill of it.
I still think you turned out just fine.

I  want to romanticize the way it felt to feel your presence but always being at such a distance from you,
but its hard to make something so painful sound poetic.

Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it all, just a little bit.

You'll call some other girl "babe"
and I'll change my mind
the same way the leaves go from green to red and
one day I won't think of trauma when I hear your name,
I won't be calm when I sense danger,
and I won't be at peace when I hear sirens wail.

In dreams, you reach out to me like you used to and you say my name the way you promised.
Waking up is starting to hurt.
I'm trying hard to be the right kind of patient but I don't know if what I'm waiting for is still worth waiting for.
I'll wait,  anyway.
I don't know where I am going with this.
I swore I wouldn't write about you again, and I did.