We lasted 10 months
to the dot.
it seemed almost comical
how a relationship
could be so self contained.
i wondered-
looking at the freckle on the flat of your hand
whisky coloured on the smooth brown expanse—
if giving too much was really a problem I’d have to solve by myself.
the redlines we’d both crossed
reappeared in your eyes
i couldn’t understand where the stress the pressure summoned itself
begging to blow you up
but I could understand your hopelessness when you said you don’t want me to disappear.

it was only after that early morning walk to Starbucks together where
for fear of
wasting a weekend of sun
mourning
us
i debased myself
holding your hand, putting you piggyback  and running
like if i could make it to the finish line you’d give me a consolation prize and take me back.

watching videos in your halfway home
feeling your heartbeat
slow in my arms
believing it meant
this coldness was going to
melt away and
we’d rematch and be free

Until you spoke so casually
about the life you’d now get to live
unbound & free
the tautness of my heart
snapped me back to reality
cursing until my tears choked me.

i remember
packing myself away
you standing over me asking

“How are you feeling?”

like a taunt
with my fingers
grasping through the clothes
I brought to spend
in the sun
pushed to the back of
the suitcase
I stood and
unleashed all the truths
and half truths
and lies
unspooled
months
of love
in moments
to try to leave you
scarred and raw;

“you never loved me you never meant it really you want to be free you aren’t sick you don’t want to be my friend you don’t know what you want you were lying to me and now you wont even fight for me”

but you stood glacial -
and I realised it  -
was hopeless you had already moved on -
and all ive done was -
sentence myself to exile -