At the age of four, I woke up screaming because of the monsters in my room,
The ones lurking in the corners, waiting to pounce.
I imagined beasts the size of elephants creaking my floorboards,
Scratching my walls.
I hear unearthly voices calling my name.

I scream
And the voices silence.
The scratching stops.
The creaking ceases.

All is silent,
But I am scared of the silence.

My mom wanders in,
She holds me in her arms and I listen to her heartbeat.
Thump thump.
Thump thump.

It is the only thing that does not change.
It is the only steady thing,
For her arms quake with fatigue and her voice wavers as she tells me all is okay.
All is not okay.

At the age of six, the voices stopped.
The scratching stopped,
The creaking, too.

But there were new voices,
Voices that traveled through the walls from my parents bedroom.
The creaking turned to crashing, the voices to screams.
No one really payed any attention to six year old me,
Life moved on without him.
I was left behind,
Left stuck in that moment.
Life was a blur.

Then something happened—
Something strange,
Something great.
I met her.

Eyes of the ocean, hair of the sand.
I went swimming.
I got lost and I did not want to be found.
I was lost at sea.
I was blind but I could still see.

She made life slow down.
Everything was good.

I heard the birds chirping.
I saw the sky blue.
The scratching stopped,
The voices and the creaking, too.
I slept safe and sound,
Without waking up to monsters in the corner
And without screams in the night.
I slept and did not wake up scratched from the demons in my chest—
She took them away.
She made me happy.

The scratching turned to whispers,
The creaking turned to laughs,
And the voices turned to I love you's.

There was no more screaming or growling in the dark corners of my room. She made me happy.
As time passed we grew closer.
We kissed,
We held each other
And, well, it was a roller coaster.
One with many ups
And some downs.
It was exhilarating.

But, the thing about roller coasters is that they always come to an end,
With a stop that lurches you forward, making you want to go again.
But, you have to get off.
So we lurched to a stop, and we got off.
We said our goodbyes, and I love you's.
And then.
There was no more you.

There were no more monsters in my closet,
But now the voices were in my head.
The scratching on my door was now on my chest,
And the creaking turned to the quaking of my bed
As I shook back and forth.

I could not relax.
The voices came back.
The pain came back.
She loved someone else.

There are now monsters in my closet,
But they are not the size of elephants.
They no longer bare teeth at me;
Instead, they smile—
There are two monsters.
She is one.
The one she loves is the other.

And I will not be able to stop from thinking where it went wrong
Because I will have all the extra time to think and to overthink.
Then I realize.

/it/did not go wrong.
Nothing went wrong.
It was not a single moment.

It was a series of events in which she fell out of love as I feel deeper in it.
It was cruel as I tried to make up for her missing love.

Because one can only love with all of themselves.
Not with all of someone else.