tell me, how long do heartbreaks last? it has been a long while now, darling and i should have gotten over you already, but here i am still mailing my heartaches to september, hoping that its rains take it all away. i should have gotten over you but still, i have learned to hide my love in the crumpled edges of every unsent letter. i have learned to tuck it in a box of overrated heartaches. i have learned to silence it, just as i have learned to silence all the songs i can never listen to again without breaking.
i should have gotten over you by now but my here i am — palms made of longing and rust, reaching out for empty couches and empty beds — a stubborn instinct, a muscle memory carved in my brain. and despite all the fumbling, all the reaching — all these spaces can offer are poems spilled by these telltale lips, like lilies crowding a grave of what we were and what had been. i should have gotten over you by now, but what's the harm in failing? after all, i have nothing more to lose but made-up metaphors and midnights.
so these are all my high-hopes free-falling once more to the ground. so this is me, straightening up the crumpled edges. this is me, tearing boxes and looking at heartache in the eye. this is me, drowning in the songs we ruined no matter how much it rips my heart. and this isn't another one of those unsent letters; this is an apostrophe i never dared to write seven years earlier, cause darling, some heartbreaks, you turn to poetry; some heartbreaks, you just don't. this is a testimony about what it's like to say 'i love you', and you can hear the hesitations from the tip of their tongue. this is a testimony about what it's like to have someone slipping and fading away amid all your denials. this is about what it's like to kiss someone and see someone, and the living with the pain of not knowing it's your last. this is about what it's like to wake up one day, and one month, and one year after they leave without the emptiness getting any lighter. this is about what it's like to lose someone — to just lose someone right before your very eyes. this is a testimony, darling, about what it's like to lose someone — to just helplessly lose someone when you still love them so much.