SWEETHEART,

FOR SOME,
LOVE IS THE CURE.

AND

FOR SOME,
LOVE IS THE DISEASE.

We were lukewarm hearts and cups of coffee
Breakfast in bed on Sunday morning
Videos of laughter and short-lived occurrences
Late night drives with the radio too loud
Saturday afternoon movies and naps
And a box of letters that ended in
P.S. I love you

Some paths are destined to diverge
Meeting in one spot where they are better together
Leading the way, stepping stones for what's to come
Intertwining in the softest light
The love was so persuasive you could taste it
And it sounds so simple to keep going unitedly
But love never is
Some paths are destined to diverge
But some are destined to meet again
And all my hope is planted in that some
And that maybe we could be one of them
To join once more

The thing about love
See
Is that it can be everything, and nothing
Everywhere, and nowhere
Too much, and not enough.
All at once.
And it's hard to remember the beauty of the fire
After it burns and maims your skin.
But oh, but oh.
The beauty was there. The fire was there.
And the burn will never truly heal.

There is something about getting knocked down
by one who once claimed to love you
It does something to you
It makes you feel so much prettier
On the floor

this is not a poem
          
          

                       *just a mere

image
consisting of

                                         straight lines
and curves

I sat in front of you with tears streaming down my face. I knew at this moment, it was over between the two of us.

All I wanted from you was to acknowledge that you hurt me and that you were sorry for breaking me.

But all you said to me was, “If it wasn’t me to hurt you, it would have been someone else.”

it’s interesting to think about all the right people who might’ve come into your life at the wrong time.
but then again,
i often wonder if time could’ve saved or wrecked us at all.
maybe from the start, we were destined to be nothing more than strangers.
even if i had been weighed down, glued to one spot,
nomadic tensions silenced,
it seems likely that, still, our friendly smiles and cordial jokes would’ve been
limited, somehow,
by unseen barriers,
by the cruel overseer that is fate.

i think i meant something to you, once.
not a lot, but something.
and now,
now i’m just there.
a solid. something that takes up space.
you still sit close to me,
but not as close as you did when we first met.

and i wonder, sometimes, if i did something wrong,
if there was something i could’ve done, or not done, to change things,
to make things better,
to stop us from drifting silently onto the end of the growing list of tragedies my life’s friendships have been.

but maybe there was nothing i could do.
that thought, while terrifying, is perhaps the most comforting one.
after all, it is better to be left helpless from the start than to be burdened with the knowledge that the stones you threw became part of the landslide.

i hope, maybe, that we can salvage what’s left,
perhaps even grow it into something better.
but somewhere inside, i know that’s fool’s talk.
i doubt i ever meant much to you, anyway.
i always was, and always will be, just another shadow,
another stranger,
another change of season.
i suppose i was your winter —
a barrage of snow and ice that danced in clumsily,
not bothering to think about what would happen once spring came.

i hope you’ll remember me when i’m gone.
even now, it’s nice to think that i cross your mind as much as you cross mine.
but my hopes seldom match my reality.

so, still, i am just another.
watching.
waiting.
being.
i am nothing, and in being nothing i suppose that i, too, am everything.

but i will never be your everything.

and i could say that i regret that,
but perhaps i’m still holding onto that last bit of hope.

always the optimist,
and yet even more so the pessimist.

i thought you might be both, too.
i thought we might find a way to complete one another,
much like how the land completes the sea.

but i suppose i am left the earth without its ocean,
the ground without its rain.

it’s a horrible thing, detachment.
my roots never quite find what they’re looking for in the soil.

i had just hoped you would be different.

(a.m.)