the first time you broke my heart felt like every molecule in my body had been shaken like a carbonated drink inside a plastic bottle, containing the catastrophe and sheltering the insanity as if it were a home. i could not let anyone know how close i was to exploding, i could not be weak.
i walked around daily, replaying memories we had against the backs of my eyelids like a projector against a cement wall
i played it over and over until my stomach overflowed with churning bile, wanting to eject the inauthenticity of nostalgia
while watching i would try to make meaning of the dialogue, and you, being it’s main featured character
i made you out to be the hero but you were the villain, you destroyed the plot, you slaughtered the character’s lives, yet you were such a deceivingly good actor
have you ever heard something so many times that you started to go insane?
words can hit you so hard they start to feel like they’ve been carved into your brain, able to be sounded like keys on an everlasting piano, one note insisting for another to play along with it
but you’re not a song that i want to listen to anymore

the second time you broke my heart, i had it coming
i told myself this was it
every time i watched you blink i watched the doors to your soul close
have you ever let anyone in?
every kiss enabled another voice in my head telling me goodbye
but the best part about me letting you into my heart for a second time was that it didn’t really break
what i thought was my chest ripping open, withdrawing blood vessels and vitals, was really the nerves in my body connecting again, i can feel again
i can feel again
i am healing and here months later,
stitched up and intact
you can’t hurt me anymore