You act as if everything is okay.  You let him stroke your hair and hold you in his arms because you're lonely, and he loves you. He never stopped loving you. You think that you have it all under control because when he leans in to kiss you, something makes you stop him, and at that moment you have given yourself the chance to do the right thing. To tell him to leave, and never ask him to come back. But as soon as he's gone you're empty again. Empty like the day your first boyfriend went to see his ex-girlfriend for a talk, even though he told you he hated her guts. Empty like the first time he called you a ***** and made you cry.  Empty like the day you had to call him and tell him that your baby is gone, the baby he didn't know about. Empty like the night you took one or three or five too many Ambien after he hung up on you when you needed him the most. You hate this emptiness. It stands for everything that's every gone wrong in your life, and so the next time you see him, you kiss him like he doesn't remind you of your first boyfriend, even though he does.  You watch him smile, you see the hope in his eyes, and feel part of yourself dying on the inside, because you know that it won't end well. That this time, you'll be the heart breaker, not the heart broken.

Months later you remind yourself that he was there when you thought you were pregnant, again.  With your ex-boyfriend who you still loved's baby no less. You remind yourself how he was ready to step up, and how you never could feel the same way about him. So you try to make yourself believe that you deserve what he's doing.  You let him tell you that you broke his heart, let him spread vicious lies about you, and then tell him not to apologize on the rare occasions that he tries too.  You tell him that he's right, that it is your fault. That you just want him to be happy.  When you find someone new you fall in love, and think everything is going to be okay. Think that you've finally stopped chasing after lost puppy dogs and found a boy who doesn't need fixing. Yet for some reason you still cry at night. You still want to hold on to the people you've lost and the people who hurt you.  You still feel the sting of pain when July passes and you should be in the hospital with your newborn, but you're not.  So you write poems and try to use words to make sense out of life, but nothing ever seems to be enough, and when you hold your youth minister's four month old, so tiny and helpless, you can't help but burst into tears. All you can hear is the baby's mother saying over and over again how big the baby looks in your arms. All you can feel is the maternal instinct to clutch the child closer to you and feel it's heart beat. You try to tread water, but it feels like your drowning, and the emptiness you've been running from comes flying back. Whispering in your ear that it never left in the first place.