it's difficult to reflect on how the people we once clung to
become strangers again,
how we mourn the living.
the way we block them on our phones,
out of our minds,
forcing our brain to forget what the heart still holds on to,
but you can never really mend the imprint on your soul
and forget the person who left there.
instead,
you find mediocre replacements
that don't quite match their outline.

when our lives become so intertwined with someone else's,
you don't forget them simply because
they are no longer there.
you're stuck wanting things to go back to the way they used to be
or to not have happened at all.
those anniversaries,
first times,
intimate moments,
can't go back to being just another Tuesday.
you're haunted by heartache
planted in skeletal corners,
buried in every place you have ever been.
the reminders come at the worst time,
when that song plays in the grocery store or
you're on your way to a first date and
a car passes in their particular shade of grey.
suddenly,
you're sent back into orbit,
or maybe you never left.

i like to think that if you love something
a piece of it will always linger, but
sometimes
the scars left behind are too tender
to risk falling back into the familiar.
someone you spoke to everyday become
someone you have't spoken to since-
i want to believe that we forget each other out of necessity
and not a lack of care.
reminiscing,
you wonder if it was worth it,
what did you do to deserve this?
you want to fast track the pain into healing,
worrying that you're ruined.
defective.
damaged goods.

and when you least expect it,
everything will come to a halt.
the revolving,
spiralling,
self destruction
replaced by a pale pink tinge.
daisies return to nothing more than a flower.
you find new strangers with souls fractured
in the same way as your own,
complimenting collisions,
the type of comfort that makes you wonder
how you could ever have been apart.

after years have passed,
you return to a place you once considered home
and in the distance you see them,

that beautiful stranger you know too well.