something snapped in me earlier this month
i think it was the bough that held most of what was rotten inside of me
but it could've just been the breath i was holding ever since the day i declared that your absence was never permanent, but i realized that this time it is
but this is not a poem about hoping that what goes up must come down, and what leaves you has to come back around
it's about how the clouds are looking more like laughing children
and i hear the birds in the morning without mourning you at the sight of an empty chair
i have found truth in a kind of beauty that has nothing to do with you

two weeks ago, all i thought about was what kind of person you have become and if they are anything like the person i fell in love with, but

if i've learned anything about love from you
it's that sometimes it means screaming until your voice shatters and other times it's found in silence
or growing out of old ways and apologizing despite only having fallen so hard, you left a crack in the cement

i've learned that the only reason anyone could ever replace me is because i left a hole big enough in their chest to need replacing
and by the end of it all, i got to laugh and cry and *** and be the truest, most human version of myself in the presence of someone else
i have a whole lifetime to do it all over again

i loved the things that you would do when you were you
that is enough for me