I’ve accepted this.
This isn’t something that brings me great joy
But it is something that I just had to face:

It’s over.
The person I trusted the most left.

My mind doesn’t rest easy with this.
How can anybody be completely unaltered
After losing someone they trusted?

You hope that you can trust people
You hope those people will not hurt you.
But sometimes the ones closest to you will leave
Leaving you to wonder:
Why does this hurt so bad?

People leave.
Trust shatters.
Life, sadly, moves on.

*- j.m.

I find it sad that I continue to think of you.
I encounter you in my dreams,
And I don’t know why.

It’s as if when you left
You really didn’t leave.
You retreated into a place that I’m not too fond of.
My memories.

Any word,
Any date, or any place is a trigger.
Rapidly the bullets of my mind fire,
Lacking courtesy and mercy.

I figured, if I burned the notes and the cards…
If I smashed all of the presents from the past…
Maybe… just maybe you would go away
And my mind could finally get some rest.

The sad thing is that you cannot control dreams,
And you cannot destroy memories.

Everything catches up to you eventually.
Maybe, I should stop running.

*- j.m.

Trust is not something I relinquish.

You have to earn it,
I have to surrender.

You have to show that you’re different.
And, I have to omit previous experiences
Where others have failed to cherish the gift they received.

It’s hard to erase ink that many have spilled on my papers.

So, if I give you my trust
Tread lightly…
Because it isn’t wise to fool with thin ice.

*- j.m.

She said your name yesterday
It wasn’t the fact that she said it that took me aback
It was with the naïve and almost joyous tone that she spoke your name.
Of course, it was natural for her to be happy.
She saw that you brought me happiness,
And she probably bought the sugarcoated truths we told her.
About how distance took us apart,
Or maybe how it just wasn’t the right time.
By buying into the doctored truths we told, it probably gave her a sense of hope.
Distant opportunities, that one-day further down the road
We’d be together.
Although when I heard your name, it all came back.
The truth unfolded itself within my mind.
It was bitter and raw.
Flashing back through the all of the memories,
One thought lingered in my mind:
Sometimes, love dies.
At that instant I returned to reality,
And the only word I could muster up in a stoic tone laden with defeat was:

“Oh.”

*- j.m.

Sometimes
your best
isn’t enough.

*- j.m.

We left the book open months ago.
Our love told a fantastic story,
But suddenly it fell apart.
Almost instantaneously
Our love became inked pages falling from the binding.

I loved our story,
Quite honestly I miss our story.
But, the way that our story ended wasn’t right,
A love as rich as ours shouldn’t have ended through phone calls and text messages.
It deserved an ending full of rich depth.
It deserved something much more than what we gave it.

I don’t know if you still think of me.
I doubt it.
But I think of you.
I know you moved on,
And I moved too.
But we broke it off in different places,
We called it quits when we were probably longing for each other to hold on.

It ended suddenly,
Without a final goodbye,
But with periods at the end of messages.

An improper dénouement for a fairytale.

I didn’t want to let myself fall back into the trap
I didn’t want to remain within a passive shell of my previous self.
I knew it was time to be active,
Or history would have repeated itself.

I was honest,
I was authentic,
I spoke my mind,
And let my tongue free.

This time, I took control.

At some point in life,
A person has to choose to stop meandering.
They have to refuse to be blown around by the winds of life.
At some point, a person has to become an active participant in his or her own life.
And, this was my time.

I took control of the situation,
And I started looking out for me.
Pardon me, if didn’t consider how you felt
Or if I was being too blunt,
But sometimes you need to look out for yourself before you consider others.

Sometimes, you need to watch your own six…
Because you don’t know if the person behind you is really behind you.
Sometimes, the ones that you’d die for are the ones that are pulling the trigger.
If Caesar was betrayed by his closest friend,
What more does that say about the average person and those that are around them.

Know when to take control,
And know when to watch your own six.

*- j.m.