You were always a 12-hour shift
Just two punches of my lips
Once in at 10PM
And once out at 10AM
An easy rhythm of making sure you were satisfied
I quit, but I forgot to clock out
And this ******* feeling never seems to fade even after I worked my last shift.

I cannot process a heartbreak that I have yet to begin.
Not a lover, but a friend that left my heart in two.
15 years of memories, laughs, secrets, and sleepovers.
From grade 3, yet you still found it in your heart to leave.

Do you know how it feels? Acerbic.
I just tried to show you the red flags yet he convinced you that I was one instead.
You chose a man that cares for nothing more than getting in your pants, over a friend that only wants you to be safe

Was it easy for you to give us up?
You made the decision so suddenly that the knife of numbness is still stuck in my heart.
I'm scared of what I'll feel once I try to remove it.
For now it's fear of what will happen when you're left with just him.

I look at myself and wonder if I'm a bad person for letting you stay.
Then I look at pictures of you and remember you decided to drop me.
Yet I still pose the the question "Am I the *******?"

We were never a love story...
We were more a story of love
But-
You were a title and I merely a chapter
We grew no choice but to digress
To go back to being best friends, two peas in a pod who stared at each other a second too long.

Sometimes it’s like a dream in broad daylight
A realization of the blessing I’ve been given in my life
A magical feeling surrounds me- they call it love
Feels like an ecstasy I can never escape
A feeling I tried to escape until I realized I could not find peace with it.
Drowning in devotion, almost as though he has become my religion
A heaven sent energy
I’d let him take slice of my heart if it meant keeping him fed with love and support.
A piece of heaven brought into a living hell
He calls me an angel- little does he know that he’s the reason for my wings
He is everything I haves prayed for and more.
A love everlasting that brings peace to a chaotic mind, a man worthy of forgiveness, acceptance and so much more- a man I’ve been granted the opportunity to call mine.

I saw you at a party and from across the room you smiled at me and I was only able to smile back by reminding myself of how I felt before you left me for someone that you felt was better than me.

You passed by me and laughed at my joke as though the last thing you said to me didn't make me choke.

You waved goodbye to me and did a double take as though I was the one that left you and as if this was my choice to make.

I saw you at a party and I really wish I hadn't because now I question if you miss me too after months without seeing you.

I used you
I used you so long that I broke you
I tried to forget about the pain in my chest
I tried to numb myself by chasing your love that was never meant for me
I know you might not forgive me
But-
I'm sorry.

I keep our memories as secrets from others but mostly importantly from myself.

It was the sensation that exploded from just ******* that reminded me that you were just a toy and my love for you a myth.

Once in a Blue Moon
After nights without you
I miss you six times over.

He was mad again.
I could hear it in the way he answered the phone with a stern "Hello."
I didn't understand
"What did I do?"
"It's fine," he repeated over and over
Yet, it was not fine.
As the call ended and my cheeks continued to stain with dry tears just like every time before.
I never understood
It felt like I was drowning
Like I had dug my own emotional grave and didn't notice it was already seven feet deep.
yet, he said he loves me...

Is this love?

Yet, you don't tell me you love me
But, it feels like you love me more than he ever will
Yet I stayed with the other
Even though he makes me cry
Even though there are nights I cannot recall and bruises that seem to stay even after they have faded away
Maybe I told you that I loved him because it was easier than admitting I was scared
Maybe I told you I loved him because it was easier than asking for help
Maybe I told you I loved him because it was true...
...but deep down we both knew.

"I am tired"
Yet I light the cigar again
"I am tired"
Yet I am five shots in again
"I am tired"
Yet I take another happy little pill too soon
I am starting to wonder what kind of tired I am

My mind races with thoughts of you. Memories of us hit my mind like a boxer- punch after punch until I knockout. It is so hard knowing your heart is full of pain which leads your garden of a mind to be poisoned by your lips to keep yourself safe.

I just want to open the gates and water your garden...

Silence engulfs my surroundings as I become lost in the numbing screams of my mind. It wanders to places I don't want to go.

My Kryptonite,

A month has never before felt like a year.
30 days of breakdowns and sanitizing my tears
A month alone-
Quarantined from everything but my thoughts of you

Just one day is what I crave
24 hours of bliss that bring me back from the disassociation of the everyday
I know I shouldn't risk life for a day with you
Yet the temptation grows as fast as COVID does

Tell me it's wrong
That I should keep us both safe
Remind me of the cost even if it hurts me to hear
Remind me that 30 days is nothing compared to a life without you.

Day 30 and I want to risk it all.

I started working again-
Suddenly I have to remember how to talk to people again.
Do I say "hello" first or do I introduce myself without a greeting?
I need to learn to smile with my eyes instead of my mouth because the mask covers it all night.
So many people are out and I can't help but wonder if those three months were for nothing.
Day 80 and everyone seems to act like they've forgotten what we were all fighting for.

The lights keep flickering just like the memories of you
Soon the house lights will be off too.
"Life's a trip" - that's what you left
Memories of time well spent constantly in my head
Yet they never seem to shine as bright as our lives in real time
The lights are dim now-
I think it's time for me to say goodbye...
Your words of wisdom shall never die.

My favorite genre to read is fiction;
that's why I am always captivated by your eyes and enticed by your words.

Today my mind is clouded and my heart is heavy
Although even with all this weight I carry from my thoughts to my feelings
My body feels as though I am floating between the earth an the sky with nowhere to go

An untouched forest
Oh so grand
Hints of dirt fragranced by rain
Full of crystal blue rivers that relaxes anyone that gets near to see them flow
Golden specks of morning flowers scattered within the vibrant green forest.
Combined they create the depth of your eyes that I find myself lost in so often.

I've grown into the type of person that says "I will go on with or without you."
Into a person that loses people left and right, but knows that as long as I have myself everything will be alright.
So, why is it I still check everyday for your response?

You appeared in my intuition before you appeared before my eyes.
I could sense that we were wandering close enough to cross paths for a short amount of time.

But-

What I could not sense was how your presence would bring my heart to full capacity and for a few mere moments I would be drowning in my love for you instead of simply treading.

I could not see that the moment you walked out of the door, and looked at me one to many times, that the vacancy sign in my mind would flip on while my heart continued to deny anyone from checking in.

My intuition tried to prepare me but I suppose no one can ever be ready to see the one person that left them alone walk away once more.

I go to order a drink to help me forget
As I look at the menu one catches my eye and all I can remember is what you were wearing when we first met
Samuel Adams printed across your chest
and now you're all I can remember when I'm trying so hard to forget.

When I was younger I would romanticize love
I always wanted someone that was Tonic for my heart
To leave me so drunk in love that I couldn't recall seeing life without rose tinted glasses
Have someone that I would die for and they would die for me
Although, no one warned me that love could be addictive
That the withdrawals would drive you insane
-and that if they did die you wouldn't have the choice but to continue on without them
That if you looked at life with rose tinted glasses it would bury your soul six feet under when they shattered.

I'll never forget the tears we cried in different homes
When they threw you out and threatened the same to me
The strength you built from holding your own
And coming back for me
Thank you.

So sometimes when I think of you my throat gets tight.
Sometimes my body twitches on it's own the way it would have if you touched it.
Sometimes I miss you.
But-
I must remember that you only loved me for the way my skin shined in the sun and never for the way my soul shimmered in the moonlight.
Sometimes that reason is why I can think of you and feel nothing at all.
So although sometimes I cry at my memories with you, other times I am glad I left you too.

I always find myself thinking about you.
Even on days where I am busy-
My thoughts still find their way to you.

I can't seem to shake the feeling of a string that keeps us tied together while we are on our own separate journeys.
Although your absence still burns- I know I am better off.

I wish you could see me now...

To see what the pain of losing you created as I learned to love myself because I had no other place to pour my love.
I am so powerful without you and maybe you were the upside down fool in my deck of cards and now you are upright and do not deserve to see what you have helped to create.
Yet, there is still that feeling that we are connected in our souls and I cannot seem to find scissors strong enough to cut it.

My logic knows you never belonged to me but my heart questions whether or not you ever will.
A battle within myself that even at my highest point I cannot shake because maybe right now I am my own fool.

Strangers is how we began
I held a shy smile as you radiated confidence with your own.
Immediate friendship in the blink of an eye- never ending laughs in another.
Blinks that turned into years...
I couldn't have imagined another blink would end it all.
Our laughs turned into sweet memories as silence became our reality
How did we end as strangers too?

You whispered you loved me as you yelled all the things you hate about me
You asked me to be honest but I was met with rage
I’d ask you to come over, and you thought that meant I want you to *** over and over
I askd you if you were doing okay, I was met with “what’s your problem anyways”

The weight of an unrequited love
it feels so heavy-
It's probably the heaviest weight of all
I wonder if that's why my heart is so strong

The walls of my room have secrets that even my closest friends do not know.
They have seen me toss and turn restless night after restless night or watched me play dead as I sleep away my exhaustion.
The passing time within these walls have been painted with the sound of my cries and cleaned with pools of my tears as I constantly wonder why I am never good enough.

They hold the moans of men that are enticed ever so long to make their mark and then leave.
The walls hear the conversations about men that didn't matter but still managed to make me feel like I did.
They hold the snores of others as they rest peacefully after finding pleasure as I lay still wondering why I still feel nothing.

The walls hold in everything.
They have heard every intrusive thought and every "I hate you" that has managed to escape from my lips towards my own reflection.
They have heard my anxious whispers-
my whimpers of pain.
Yet, they do not judge.
They simply lock away everything I can never find the courage to say.

They should really put a warning before spending a year of your time with someone that will never make you theirs.
A warning that ending it will be easy, but staying gone will be hard.
That your nights will feel different when you aren't wrapped in their sheets.
A warning that you'll still miss them even though they were never yours to begin with.

I can still feel the way your arms wrapped around my waist as you hugged me in the kitchen looking down at me with the biggest smile on your face
But- I can also recall the feeling of how cold it was when you pulled them away so your friends wouldn't see us.
I wondered why you were ashamed of us
But- now I realize that you were just scared of being in love.

I wonder if your heart becomes as heavy as mine
If thoughts of me ever flood your mind.
Do you also feel like it is hard to breathe?
As though you cannot receive enough oxygen no matter how deep the breaths you take may be?

I wonder if your throat tightens like mine does when I start to wonder where everything went wrong.
Because I can't seem to find an answer I just know that we fell off.

Do you ever wonder about why we never ended up together even though the love on both ends was so strong?
Because I wonder often- even though I know I shouldn't

...I stay wondering if you're wondering too.