desperately, i try to claw through my chest
with dull, filed-down nails in an attempt
to break apart these stitches in time
that are holding me together, barely,
with a single thread;
i laugh as if mocking my own futile battle against my past
with knowledge of what my present stacks
in tightly wrapped boxes hidden under my own bed,
guarded by a monster
with four hands and four legs and four arms and two hearts,
because i left myself entwined in him that night
and never bothered to ask for mine back.

so i write this letter to him knowing
it will go unread because his eyes have grown
accustomed to the darkness under there
and the only light i’ve ever seen came from his smile
and he hasn't smiled at me in 3 weeks, 2 days, and 1 minute
but who's counting up,
i only count down until this year ends
and i can put up a new calendar with new dates
that wont be ruined by his
discontented restlessness and absent mind.
i can fill it with plans and hope,
my life squeezed into inch-wide boxes.

but nothing that i do will make the slightest difference,
like subtracting my 20 years from infinity and
dividing my pain into months and days and seconds,
dividing until i press it into a slide and it is
invisible even under a microscope,
because it doesn’t matter
and he doesn’t matter
and i don’t matter
and nothing matters
and nothing ever will. not here,
in this vortex of voided passion and wasted time.

i have no more love to give, he has it all.
nor can i take any-
i lack the space.
my muscles are filled with agony,
my lungs with salt water,
my bones with frailty
and my tongue with the bitter sting of goodbye.

if i were gone no one would even notice.
maybe he would cry
but later he would forget. in milliseconds
i would be reduced from infinite heartache to nothing
and then maybe i could forget like everyone else,
my own well-deserved plunge into happiness.