I knew I didn't love you anymore
When I could fall asleep without pills
My own exhaustion was enough to quiet my mind, to take my thoughts and smother them
I didn't need alcohol anymore to forget the way your eyes lit up and I can't remember how they made me feel when they looked into mine
I don't spend all day punishing myself for staring at your photographs because I've rid myself of all of them (the first one I burned slowly in my fireplace when I was too weak for anything else and needed to watch the flames lick at your face to remind me of reality, needed to pretend you had burned away too to convince myself you weren't coming back,and the final few I tossed carelessly in the trash as I cleaned my house after a party)

I no longer think of your smile in the moonlight,
Or the way your hair looked in sunlight
I have given away everything you gave me
(including the love, which now resides in the heart of a friend who lost her sister and needs it more than I)
And this letter, my once dearest, is my final goodbye

your fingertips brushed up my bare back
you wrote poetry up my spine,
placed commas in the spaces between
my vertebrae

there are always certain places
to avoid after a breakup
because they remind you of lost love

I can't look in the mirror anymore
because I see you all over me

How do you smile when it feels like the butterflies in your stomach turned into termites? How do you laugh when they start gnawing at your heart?

I think I started writing you away before you were gone
I wanted to make sure I could let you go before I did
I wanted to feel numb when I pushed you away
so I wrote
I put you on pages,
typed chapter titles for every single time you looked at me
I wrote until you were a novel,
read you until you were no longer novel,
and put you on a shelf so I could start waiting to forget about you,
a memory trapped in unused synapses

and after I shut your final chapter
but before your pages had started to collect dust,
I realized what I had done
See, I had taken each word from within me,
harvested my heartstrings, plucking them and mixing them to make ink,
The pieces of you I kept in my heart
sat as words on a page, aging
while my heart, once strong, felt too empty
and cavernous to beat under the weight of the sigh pinning down my chest

In all of my preparing
I had forgotten that I am human

I forgot feelings aren't like a fountain
there's no faucet you can turn off to keep them from
running through your mind
no way to stop them from flowing
back through your mouth when you try to
swallow them, mixed with ***, in your best friend's basement,
days after you forgot that you can't turn off a rainstorm
you can try to catch the raindrops in a bucket
but the bucket you'll need is big enough to drown in
you can try to hold out an umbrella
but if the wind is hard enough
you're still going to end up cold and dripping,
tearstained and shivering
waiting until the sun comes out

I forgot that I can't control the weather,
or anything other than myself for that matter
The end of a storm doesn't equate to the appearance of a rainbow

I realized that just because my fingers twisted around yours until
they melted together doesn't mean you'll forgive me
and that you left tattoos on me that only time will fade
and we're both going to be mad
I found out that
every song that ever reminded me of you doesn't cease to exist
I have to re-watch movies because they're different now, somehow,
and just because my hair is probably still all over your clothes
and I talked to you every day
and you gave me months of memories
and thinking about you is gut-wrenching
doesn't mean that I won't spend days praying for patience
and hoping for healing because
***** it, letting you go doesn't mean I don't miss you

your image fades from mind
as the sun sets to a black sky and
I wonder if you meant what you said,
I wonder if I really want you to mean it,
I wonder if, sitting here in the dark,
I think I am in reach of something
that is no longer there

you said you couldn't
fall in love

did you mean
with me
or someone else?

i would like to think there's
some kind of hope
some kind of light
some kind of love
that we can share
when we are less
broken

i don't want to fix you
but maybe
i can help you
to pick up the pieces
and buy the glue
that i know will work
because i have
used it
before

I am trying too hard to be a deadly fire
or an unspeakable storm,
I am trying too hard to be angry
and unlovable
though I know I am neither
I am trying too hard
to be chaotic and indestructible
trying to create coldness and bitterness
even though I know that flaws are human
and unconditional love exists.
There is artful beauty in the aftermath of mistakes,
you just have to find it.

I dreamt I killed a man.
Somebody really burnt
the old mill to the ground
down in a crackling
bonfire
as half the town just watched,
eyes wide and gaping mouths
like mackerel.
My skin is whiter
than the snowdrops
in my garden. I imagine
you, kissing my belly.
I wish someone would just
relight me.

nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.