He’s not the ‘forever’ type.

He’ll take you to a park on your first date and ask you to dance to hungry eyes, and he’ll say ‘gosh, you’re intelligent - you’re not just smart, you’re intelligent’ and he’ll say it like there’s actually a difference.

On the second date he’ll make you fall in love. Not the ‘real’ kind of love but the heart racing, take-your-breath-away kind that says, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone like this again.’

The cruelest thing he’ll do is let you believe you have a special place in his heart.

He’ll call at 10am or 10pm or halfway through dinner. He’ll call and your heart will lurch and you’ll swoon and laugh and pretend it didn’t hurt when he didn’t turn up last Saturday. He’ll call and you’ll drop your ego like you drop your knife and fork, and you’ll run straight to his front door.

And standing on his porch, you’ll smooth over your skirt and hair, and bite your bottom lip like a schoolgirl who hasn’t learnt her lesson, and he’ll answer the door and say, come, meet my friend. I’m teaching her to dance.

She likes hungry eyes too.

I broke up with you
Because I'm dishonest; a cough syrup symptom of walls I built so high.

I broke up with you
Because when I look at you I hate you; that glare of pain in your eye. The pain I've caused it hangs like smog over once beautiful hazel-greens.  

I broke up with you
Because you remind me of my parents' relationship... If you could even call it that. Doomed from the beginning, loomed and grinning over my sister and I.  

I broke up with you
Because I'm an *******.
Because I'm afraid.
Because I'm selfish.
Because I don't deserve love.

How dare I say I loved you
How could I?
I was broken, bent, weighed down
By my mere existence.

You picked me up
And I held on.

I was too busy being lifted
To see your breaking shoulders
You became my hope
And you began to lose your own

I never learned your dreams
Not in depth anyway
I was too busy with my sadness
That you tried to take away

I wish I would've asked to see
The talents in your grasp
The music you made
The world's you created

But I was a flooded river
And you were the shore
It's hard to say
Who swept up who

I wore you thin
How long can a man carry
A dead weight
And expect to be strong?

You began to pull away
And you began to slip up
You found solace in a familiar dance

Unprescribed yet medicated
Dosed with doubt
And lack of love

And me?
I still needed you
I still expected you.

And I blamed you
For not carrying me
When you were broken

We were twisted around each other
In substance and lack thereof
We crumbled trying to hold each other up

How could we?

How could I?

How could you?

None of this was supposed to happen.

I'm sorry.

I don’t believe I’ll ever
understand – or forgive or forget – or even know how

he was never, never going to leave me. Yesterday.
And how
he is never, never going to be
with me. Today.

This second, I will
make a little cup of tea
And try not to spill it
or burn my tongue. And dream of the ease
of many tomorrows from now.