I wish that I could go away.

And I wish that when I went away,
The pieces of me I left with you,
I wish those would go away too.

I wish that every speck of sunlight
That fell upon my skin
Every breath of air
Left behind from my mouth
And every dream of touch
That lingered on your fingers-
I wish they’d go with me.

I don’t want you to remember me
I don’t want to cause you pain-
More pain than I extend
Even from my presence;

I don’t want to leave a mark
On your otherwise spotless record
A mote of dust
On an otherwise polished frame;
I want to disappear
Like the clouds from in front of the sun
Like the rain from a clear blue sky
Like my darkness impeding your light...

I’m sorry that I brought you with me
Down to the depths of darkness
Where my soul deigns to dwell
I’m sorry I suffocated you
Ruined you
Buried you
When all I wanted to do
Was breathe you in
And start afresh.

Best friends, forever.
Does the comma signify
A hesitation?
A regret?
Several regrets.
Memories that keep the words from touching
Ínstersecting
Bleeding into one another.
Even when the words forget,
The comma remembers
The space between us.
Sometimes it grows wider,
Sometimes it shrinks
But there’s always
Space-
Keeping me separate from you.
The period, at the end
Is forever set in stone?
But stone erodes
It crumbles
Just like we’ve started to.
I cant remember who I was before you.
If the period changed
To an exclamation
An expression of joy, without hesitation
Would forever become a reality?...
How long was forever for you?
It still goes on for me
But that comma, it pulls you back
Keeps us double spaced.
Punctuation has a memory
More than you remember me;
And maybe, one day,
We can backspace
Put a semicolon, just wait
For the days when I’ll be more
Than an empty space in your life.

I thought you understood me
And I felt like I could really
Lay myself bare for you
Expose my soul to the elements
Just for you to take a look
And you made me feel as if
Love was worth wanting
Worth having
If I could have it with you
And now it hurts to say the words
Because they bring back things
I’ve trained myself to forget
But I lie
Because I will never forget
I see your reflection
In every mirror I pass
And I still find pieces of you
Floating in the abyss of me
And every time I scream
It’s your voice that echoes in my soul
How could I have become
So attached to a ghost
I knew the consequences
Because they’re always the same
But I’d allow you to break me
Just to feel you one last time
And I never got a whisper of goodbye
Not a wave or a touch or a taste
Of you leaving
Until you were gone
And I won’t say it’s not fair
Because you always said
“Life isn’t fair”
And I know it
And I know it
And I know it
But I won’t believe it
Because I want you so badly that
I won’t allow it to be true
But
Realizing I’m not good enough
Is a pain I’d rather lock deep inside
Because for me
Love will never be a reality
Everyone leaves.
No one tries.
I know this; I breathe this
And it fuels the kind of darkness
That’s been hiding in my chest
And it fuels the wailing apathy
That’s been building in my heart
Because you were my spotlight
And now that you’re gone
The shadows swallow me.

I find myself forgetting
That bad things don’t stop happening
Just because I close my eyes
That not seeing the carnage
Doesn’t erase the blood on my hands
That wishing for peace
Is in no way a guarantee
That even hoping for light
Can push me further into darkness
For years I’ve simply
Turned away
Not willing to see
The pain I keep stuffing inside
Overfilled, but
Unwilling to focus
On the tragedy in my history
I keep thinking
“If I don’t look, it will go away”
But then always find myself
Peeking over my shoulder.
Maybes and ifs are luxuries
My poor soul cannot afford
And so I find myself in debt
In my every waking moment.

I’m just fine not thinking about
How I am suffocating
Being buried alive as we speak
In my own inadequacy
I am choking on my irrelevance
My easily forgotten presence
And the fact that when I speak
Even my own ears refuse to listen
I am a whisper
And a shadow
And a shifting silhouette
I am the figure in your eye
That is always in the corner
Shuffled about by the other visions
Vying for your attention
I am the speck of dust
That sometimes enters your retina
And you don’t know why you’re crying
But I do
I do
It’s because I’ve entered your line of sight
And you’d forgotten I existed
And your apologies are not needed
Because while you forgot, I didn’t
I stopped existing when your eye wasn’t upon me
Because I am in no way
A permanent fixture.
I shine in a temporary spotlight
With your hand upon my head
And when your hand wanders I disappear into the dark
I vanish with your love
As it is bestowed upon another
I die with every praise that leaves your lips, not for me
And never ever again for me.
Reality demands that I sink further into the nothingness I’m borne from
And I
             s
              

                   i


                            n
  


                                     k


Into your shadows never to be seen again.

I would rather drown in this
Than pretend it doesn’t hurt
To hear you say that you don’t want me
In not so many words,
But I guess I’m more embarrassed
Than I am heartbroken
Because I really believed someone
Would want to pry me open
And see me
And love me
And find a life worth living
But I guess when I evaluated
Myself I was too forgiving
And I didn’t try to account
For some of the faults I know I possess
Instead I let them pass, gave myself a brief recess
When I should’ve cracked down harder
When I should’ve seen the signs
Instead of letting myself believe
Letting my heart call you mine
And now I want to curl in bed
And hold onto the pain
A not so gentle reminder
For my love-worn brain
That feelings only hurt
And that no one will ever try
So I really need my heart
To stop trying to ask me why
And stop reaching out to people
Who will never reach back
And that I really need to stop
Trying to cut myself so much slack
I’m so naive sometimes
So sensitive to others words
That when I think I hear affection
I find later that I misheard
And I was wrong about the direction
Our thoughts seemed to be flowing
But now that flow has stopped
And I have no idea where I’m going
Where I start, where I end
Where the emptiness begins
And I’ve started to think maybe
I should let the shadows win
Because they’ll take away the pain
And the hurt and the regret
Maybe I’ll be free/if only I can forget.

I wrapped you around my heart like a vise
Just tight enough to hurt
Both a balm and a shield
To protect me from the world;
A comfortable crutch
To hold me up
When I could not, for myself,
Find a rod to support my bones.
You were my guardian  
And my sword in a time of war
Cutting away any pain
That may have come too close.

I might have believed your implied word
Your unspoken promise to stay
But for the sting of blood and bone I felt
The moment you pulled away
Leaving an exposed wound
From which my pain could seep.

I suppose I should have earlier
Realized my mistake-
Perhaps it would’ve saved me
From the **** you left behind.
That you were not a shield, no
Protection
For the weak.
You were a bandaid, only
Protecting the infection inside.

Now I walk around
With a heart left to fester
A giant leaking wound which
Only I can see
And every time I’ve tried
To find a balm, even a bandaid
I remember the gaping hole
That you left inside me.