At the end of the road,
There’s someone staring back at me.
I see it, and it looks like me.
But, it can’t be me.
Her hair untamed,
like a lions mane
her eyes don’t shine,
and I feel to blame.
Her heart lays broken,
on the floor in front of me.
She can’t be me,
I can’t be her.
I want her to get herself up off the floor.
Her cheeks are sullen,
Eyes are grey,
and I wonder what made her this way.
But I’m here, and I’m happy.
I feel she’s my future, or maybe she’s my past.
It’s hard to tell when you’ve been down so many paths.
I hope and I pray
these demons get taken away.
I can’t be her,
She can’t be me.

I remember it, like the back of my hand.
You walked towards me and I stood, sweaty palms intact.
You started talking and I swear I couldn’t breathe.
And worse off, you'd only said Hi to me..
I didn't know where to go from there
I'd dropped my books in the hall,
your fingertips brushed my hand
I didn't understand.
Why help me?
You have places to go, people to see.
So why'd you stop to help me.
You didn’t stop there,
you stopped me in the hall, asking for the class notes.
Little did I know you started building my hopes.
The trips to my house, the late night talks...
I couldn’t pinpoint what made me fall,
in my mind you had it all.
The tricks of the trade spun differently for you,
you have this thing about all the things you do.
You did it for me right?
Wrong.
You did it for her.
I was blindsided,
I never saw it coming, but it snuck up quick.
Like a predator chasing its prey, I never stood a chance.
You wanted me, to get to her.
Did you see us together all the time?
Is that how the plan unfolded in your mind?
You knew were inseparable,
Sisters connected at the hip.
You took a crash course on crashing,
Taking my best friend from right under me.
I didn’t see it coming, so can we go back?
Can I get a redo?
Cause now all I feel is hate with every little thing you do.
I wouldn’t of let my palms sweat, my heart race.
I wouldn’t have kept pace with my feelings.
My books would have stayed spread out on the floor,
When you came to see me at home, I would have shut the door.
Those notes would have stayed in my binder
the ignore button would have served as my reminder.
My blushes wouldn’t have reacted,
and my hand would have retracted.
My eyes would have wandered,
that ‘hi’ wouldn’t have left my lips.
I would have kept walking,
and I wouldn’t be left like this.

My chest weighted by a million pounds,
my ears crammed with a million sounds.
There’s so much to take in,
so much to be seen.
There’s half a million sides of me.
I want you to know,
every little piece of me.
But, it’s hard to expose
the parts of me unknown,
to even me.
I’ve got secrets, and cracks,
I’ve hidden my face behind millions of masks.
For the first time, I want to be seen
by you,
and the half a million sides of me,
finally agree.

I think that’s the painful part,
remembering our start.
The innocence,
the uncontained bliss,
it’s such a contrast to now
and I’m still stuck wondering how.
How that chapter of my life is closed,
how is it that we’ve become opposed?
I think I believed we were indestructible,
that our relationship wasn’t corruptible.
It hurts most when I think about it, about us
and all the things we said in unshakeable trust.
Those words float now,
detached, but unforgettable somehow.
I keep asking, why?
For when we were together we aimed for the sky.
Here in the now, it’s much different.
I no longer have the ability to call you up in an instant.
We’ve grown apart,
strayed so much from our start.
We’ve grown up, but part of me is still fighting for what we had
and I know I need to stop because I laugh, but the disconnect makes me sad.
I can’t say I want to forget you, forget us
because you were somebody who had my trust
but things have changed
and we’ve become estranged.
I wish it were different, I don’t think you understand how much
but somehow I’ve benefited, for now I’m my own crutch.
So the goodbye is bittersweet.
I know a part of me, in some aspect, will always be incomplete
for a bond there was severed,
but I do wish you luck with your future endeavors.
I harbor no ill will,
and we’ll meet again on some rainy day, accepting a passing fill.
But we’ll know the truth,
we’ll share a smile that holds a million memories from our youth
and that’s what I’ll come to appreciate,
I’ll carry those wonderful memories even if we don’t affiliate.
We grow up, we change
the future isn’t something we can arrange.
We can only realize our choices,
and follow through on this voyage.
It’s messy, and beautiful, and can hurt like hell
but on the bad things we can’t dwell.
So the memories I’ll keep,
locked away, just for the rainy day when I see you on the street.

I can still feel you,
how our bodies stuck together like glue
and the sun came up, but we hadn’t slept
we were laughing, looking so very unkempt.
We’d been lost in each other,
sparked a fire that neither of us could smother.
Our minds connected too,
reminiscing on all we had commonly gone through.
But it’s starting to feel like an illusion
your memories feeling more like an intrusion.
You were gone before I could blink,
now I’m asking the bartender for a strong drink.
A whirlwind romance?
No, that means you had to of given us a chance.
But that’s not possible because you left
taking my heart with, but I’m not calling it theft.
I gave it willingly, I’m not sure when
maybe when you fixed my hair with that old bobby pin,
or when I woke up next to you, and the sleep was still in your eyes,
possibly maybe when you held me through my cries.
At some point I tucked my heart away in your hand,
under the impression that staying was what you planned.
I can’t find it in myself to hate you, but I am nostalgic
because baby our love was magic.
Or maybe it’s because I can’t erase the feel of you,
and as I stare at a picture of us, I’m not even quite sure I want to.

Momma once told me,
of a type of love not everyone gets to see.
But the way she described it
didn’t quite fit,
those fairy-tales and storybooks
because she described it as some type of crook
that took without you realizing
in the midst of your fanaticizing.
She described it as a hurricane,
the intensity, breathtaking beauty, the danger,
how it’ll change you, until you yourself are a stranger.
But it is beautiful,
that’s irrefutable.
Yet, I was still confused,
at how not everyone got this, was it really just a ruse?
My mother simply stared, looking quite bemused.
She said, “Most people are afraid, afraid to let themselves go”
Which at first confused me, for where would they go? But now I know.
It’s dangerous because it can destroy you,
you’re supplied a front row seat to something that could **** you.
And suddenly, the hurricane made sense,
this type of love is way beyond intense.
But, I’m running toward it with reckless abandon,
searching for my reckless companion.
My mother was right,
it’s such a beautiful sight.
But something she didn’t tell of, is this after peace
that the craziness does cease
and if you survive, lucky enough to be revived
you know without this type of love, you’re nothing but deprived.