"How've you been?"
You said like we were done.
Like I was finished.
The words stung like someone
was pouring salt in all my cuts.
It wasn't the question itself.
In fact it was quite compassionate of you
to ask of my current state.
If I was making it,
if I was okay.
It was that you had to use
the past tense, not the present.
Not a simple, "How are you?"
But a question you hadn't asked in a while,
something you didn't already know the answer to.
"How've you been?"
How have I been.
Have.
More or less the inquiry was toxic
asking me plainly
how I was doing without you...

Well truth is
I am barely holding myself together.
I can't go a day
a moment
a second
where I don't think about you.
And just when I get a minute
where you're less apparent in my mind,
something happens
and I think of you
all over again.
I fall apart every night
when it's cold
and I have no one to hold
me.
I breakdown and reluctantly weep
over pictures of you
of the past, not the present.
Not a simple, "Now"
but a then.
Back when
we were fixable.
I'm not okay.
I haven't been doing alright
without you.

..."I'm alright,
How are you?