you said you were happy
you said the sunsets were beautiful now

you told me you were getting better and
that you wanted me to get better as well

you said to talk to someone

you said you cared about me so much

you said you loved me

and although i knew you could never mean it in the way i wanted you to,
those words set into my heart like cement 

my trust in you was my solitude 
and i thought, cement can’t be broken, right?
little did i know that although cement is tough to break
it rips apart everything around it

silly me,
thinking you made me less fragile

when you were nothing but kinetic *****

and i learned earlier that the only difference between kinetic and potential energy is that potential energy is just waiting for a trigger

something to set it off

i felt safe with you

i didn’t have you. 

i never had you. i knew that. did i?

i told myself it would never happen.
i engraved it in every fiber of my being,
reminded myself every night with every journal entry that

it could never happen,
impossible

but the idea of you and i

waking up together and washing the

acrylics off of our backs and faces

only to leave more marks on each other’s hearts the next day

marks that couldn't be washed off

marks like the ones you unintentionally left on me

but they were one sided and 
unrequited love has always been the death of me

so i hope you enjoy your sunsets
and your girlfriend 

who knows more about your favorite band than i do

who doesn't have to worry about ******* in

who, like me, let your words set like cement in her heart 
but never experienced cement overflowing 
and drying

and tearing her heart apart

because there wasn't enough space for something so powerful and 

so toxic

maybe im the sun that’s setting in your life and that’s why you like them so much

but that’s silly, for i am not as prominent as the sun

and im sure i don’t cross your mind these days

like you suffocate mine

and with every neuron and pulse my brain sends a message
assuring my entire body that you are gone
until even my fingers begin to shake
because they miss the sensations of your touch

a touch i never experienced

and my hair starts drying out because you were my only nourishment

and my lungs threaten to cease breathing because

without knowing it

i had let you become my oxygen

but you weren't oxygen

you were carbon dioxide and humans can’t handle that
and i couldn't handle you

i didn't know happiness included pushing me away

but then again,
i am negativity and nobody needs negativity

and i try

i try so hard

i knew it would happen i knew and i warned myself and i wondered why you cared for me and you probably began to wonder the same thing and i knew you would but that was potential energy and it had to be set off and

you set it off

it's suffocating
my eyes aren't exposed to new sights
my mind isn't exposed to new thoughts
no new people
everything the same
every day so similar to the day before and
the day before that and
the day before that
i could do it in my sleep
my mind has no boundaries, it roams free from ocean to ocean,
galaxy to galaxy,
but my feet are stuck tracing the same steps i've seen a thousand times before
when i step out and explore new territory, it isn't long before gravity does its work and i am forced back into the same
routine

im trapped by the comforter on my bed
by the closed car windows
by the classroom walls
by the limitations that seem to push in tighter and tighter until i have nowhere to go but away

away to where the beds don't have comforters because the grass is comfortable enough
where the cars don't have windows because we walk everywhere we go
where my education does not derive from a textbook, but from my adventures
where i have no limitations
where the chains that kept my feet on the ground have released me
and my feet run as freely as my mind does