-

it's winter again and here we are, the same loop that caught me up in
your whirlwind last time now making home between your lungs as your head
rests against my shoulder and your face finds a place to nuzzle against my neck.
i wonder what's different as i watch your hand reach for mine and then i realize it's because
i learned to grow without you and grew without you from one long moon to the other.

-

when i called you a sunbird, i didn't mean a phoenix,
even though i didn't know it then.
see, it's been an entire year and i've learned how to create and swallow flames whole and stomp on
the ashes and even though i'd scattered yours and wished for you to rise
from them before, now i wish i'd dug my heels in a little better and cast them all aside
for good, buried you too far that you wouldn't be able to find me again, dosed and
dosed and dosed until there was nothing left of the scuff-mark under an ocean.

-

maybe i'm just bitter.
and some part of me loves it. it's a vicious part, who's still searching for that other half
and knowing now that it was never in your hands and even if it was, it's been passed off
and i won't find it with you.
great tragedies are written for stages of life, not the makeup of entire stories, and
i'm not about repetition. you already got your chapter.

-

there will be days that i start purely about me and that will end purely about me.
regardless of anything, i vow now, that i will make sure of this.
i will find (an)other boy(s) to sleep beside, just sleep beside, and i will love it and you will
hate it and i will love them. i'll be looking at them like i looked at you and you
will look at your phone each time it buzzes and hope it's me and
i won't even think to text you.
i will be selfish, ******, and karma encourages and assures me so.

-

i was willing to wait eternities.
i was willing to wade lava and tread air and hold my breath until you wanted but you chose to
snip the string that held me to your wrist and now i've found freedom in the sky and i feel
broken and torn and incomplete but infinite and i found all of this without you.
you're too impatient, and you keep wanting to 'prove to' me something you and i both know
doesn't exist. only children get mad for getting back what they'd already given out-
and i'm sorry that i'm not for not wanting to be with you.

-

i wish you didn't love me now.

-

i wish it wasn't so easy not to care.