No one will ever love you
the way that I have.
And no one will ever hate you
the way that I do.
I hate that there is nothing left of you here
nothing for me to hold on to of you
nothing to burn in place of you.
Because the only things I have left
are the images burned into
the deepest layers of my brain garden.
Past the wall where
Kurt Vonnegut is reading poetry,
the shelves that cradle the words of “Catcher in the Rye”
the lyrics of “American Pie”
past the wild flowers planted
by the sweet giggles of my daughter,
the orchids nurtured
by the smiles of my sweet boy..
deep
deep in my brain garden there is a corner,
behind an old iron fence,
where the images of you play on repeat..

I don’t walk back that far anymore.
I don’t open that gate.
For if I do,
if I cross that threshold,
I am bombarded by the times that we laid in that hotel room
and laughed until we ached,
where I awoke from a nightmare
to you stroking my hair
and holding me tightly.
Or the night
we made love in my apartment
and I caught you looking at me
like I was magic..
Before you shook the thought away,
just like that,
and the moment was gone.
Before you,
I never knew that you could fall in love with a moment.
Never knew
that you could fall in love with an instant,
a single solitary second where I thought
I could’ve sworn,
I saw you love me..
before I watched you
refuse to acknowledge
or accept even the idea
that you could love me.

I held onto that moment.
Planted wilted flowers in that moment.
And waited.
Waited for another fleeting moment
when you would let your guard down
and love me.
But while I waited,
your flowers began to grow
thorns but never petals.
After that moment,
those thorns engulfed my garden.
Every second
that you convinced me
that you didn’t love me,
those thorns spread,
twisting
and curling
around everything that attempted to flourish there.
Through the books I had loved,
and the songs I had danced to,
they covered the memories of past loves,
past lives
I had lived before you
until it was only thorns.
Until I truly thought
that gardens were supposed to be just...
thorns.

You.
Destroyed.
Me.

Then you left me.
Left me standing in the dark,
***** ground surrounded by nothing
but cobblestone remains,
walls that had crumbled
until there were only structures
that had once resembled castles.
And everything became just
dark.

Until one day,
when I met a boy who brought a single rose
into my desolate paradise.
A single rose
that would go on to multiply into a thousand different flowers,
flowers that would cover my brain garden,
grow higher than the clouds
you had covered me in
until the sunlight shattered the sky.  
Together,
he handed me brick,
by brick,
until there were castles again.
The books that had burned
in the trails of you insincere actions
rained down from the sky as beautiful new stories,
laced with golden scriptures.
And your thorns,
the thorns that you had planted,
retreated back,
back into the farthest corners of my garden.
And I built that gate.
And there you stayed.