i keep writing your name
and finding meaning in the letters.
every time i talk to you,
it feels like i'm talking to myself.
perhaps this is why i feel the presence
of a thousand people
when i am alone.

you don't mean anything to me
but i find meaning in you.
i see the bad side
over the good side
and i can't tell you
i love you
without cutting away the ribbon
that once held those words together.

you were once a mirror,
i saw parts of me in you,
but now you are an empty mirror,
i see my reflection
because you are no longer there.

this would be an excerpt
from a book i will never write
and i could read it aloud
and dissect it for you to feel,
but again, i will be talking to myself.
i have always been there for myself.
and every day, you remind me of that.

i guess this is to say
that i am done playing games
and finding meaning
in the way you ignore me
as i tell you my passions
and the lack of concern in your face
as i tell you i'm worried.

i am worried
that being alone and being lonely
are not two different things,
that i have been alone
for one year, seven months, and twenty-two days.

today would be six-hundred days
that i have known you,
or rather, six-hundred days
that i have wasted,
trying to be important to someone
who was blind to nothing but significance.

six-hundred days,
and it took me to realize that
you are an excerpt
from a book
that i will never write,
a page that i will rip out and throw away,
the scene that didn't make the cut.

the person i have no time for
is taking up my time now,
as i write with expansive vocabulary
about the pain you have caused me
and the time i have wasted.

and as i sit alone
in your presence,
i write this
but you will never read it,
nor will you ever hear it
come out of my mouth
because you never listened,
nor are you listening now.