Shifting landscapes of us
I am yet to get used to.

How many times have I wandered between
The many “what ifs” and “if onlys” and “I wish’s.”
How many times have I actively slapped my very own hand
When it invariably reaches for you.

The reaching is a selfish hungry thing.
I crave you when I am disappearing.
Even though I loathe how I define myself when I’m with you,
She is better than the unknown
That is chasing and gaping at my heels.

And that isn’t love.

Thirsting after comfort and memories
Thirsting after somewhere to belong
Is not love.

It is hard to admit
It is hard to choose to walk away
Every
Hour
We
Are
Apart.

And that craving
Of how you made me feel
The warmth
The connection
The love
A love I have never seen nor tasted before
A love I did not know how to treat
Is always being denied

And cruel suggestions
And those closest to me doubt my choices
Like they would have any part in the consequences of the choice
I would live with everyday.

I don’t even entertain the white day anymore
I used to spend hours building our life
Stacking our goals into the shapes of home
The mansions in my mind
Were never here to stay

Do I seek a grass of an unattainable green?

I lay in the dark, many hours after we ended the call.
I will myself to cry.
The pain boils in my chest and aches in my bones.
But I lay in silence, trapped.
Are we not even worth tears anymore?
Is this when the grieving stops?

I fear seeing you now.
Because I am half bloomed.
The branches we grew on and nurtured
Are drying and snapping away in the breeze
I fear you will not like me
If you see the stranger I am now
Foreign and thorny to the touch.
Will you still think me pretty?
Will you still want to touch me?

No matter how close I get to the edge
To giving in and sprinting back to you
To beg on my knees for your forgiveness
To ask you to help us bring back the love,
No matter what
I can not reconcile and justify
The hatred I held
For who I became when we loved.
Loathesome and breaking
Hair knotted against my scalp
My angles softened and blurred
Till I became more invisible to the world
Than I have ever been.
We stopped the world on its axis
Our minds grew old
Our bodies ceased their progress
And only came alive when we set each other alight.
No,
I can never return to a halting.
Dust is preferable to ice.
Frozen and still
To the death.

I am wind and rain
I must move to live
And life rises in my gusts.
The waves of creation
Roll across new paths
For I am alive again
Wind snapping in the sails
Rising on the seas
I soar to new skies.

The missing comes
The loss never leaves
Maybe I’ll always want you
But you’ll never be good
For me.