twelve days before her nineteenth birthday
the green-eyed one returns.
the girl who burns waits in silence,
hatred ready and eager at the edge of her fingertips.
he dares to tell her “I love you still.”

she doesn’t bother to remind herself that she too loved him once
before she takes her sweet time to tear him apart.
on that night she relishes the guilt in his voice
when she reminds him how she cried
until the tears dried
and the pain stole her breath away too.
he abandoned her,
saying it was the best for both of them
when it was really just the best for him.
if she was cruel
she would call him a coward.

she turns her back on that copper love
flower seeking sunlight elsewhere.
she finds it in herself one day,
not in the arms of another,
the strength to best her Everest.