the year has come full circle
and i am right in the place
that i was
just a few months
Before You.

oncoming headlights are bright and don't make much sense
but the glow of departing tail lights
is
long
and
cold
and dark.

"bittersweet"
that's what they call this.
but no dark cocoa truffle has ever
made me want to cry but
failed in the execution.

I am not Sad
and I am no longer Drowning.
It's like

you never existed.

It's like

waking up from a
very vivid, emotionally influential
dream.

It's like

moving through a fast, festive crowd,
and not being able to stop your eyes
from resting on
one lonely beggar sitting on the side of the street.

doesn't matter much, you won't remember him tomorrow,
but in this moment
you are not quite as festive as your surroundings.

i cannot believe you walked through these halls,
i cannot believe i saw your face every day,
i cannot believe how trivial everything is right now.

A sea has evaporated and left behind nothing but
sand and salt.

The tempestuous, treacherous waves are but a memory,
with only patterns in the sand
to corroborate
their ephemeral existence.

I am walking softly on the sand, feeling the somewhat familiar dips and raises,
wincing against the phantom feeling of
invisible currents pulling my legs.

how i fought against those **** things! how i panicked at the rush of water in my lungs!
how i denied my suffering! how reluctant but desperate i was, crawling against something within my own soul, how i struggled to regain footing on land!

i still feel it,
like a poorly superimposed photograph

like a haze in my peripheral vision

like a stutter in my speech
only noticed by me.

I can't believe We happened.