He has
            withered
                           me
                                 away.
I am no longer here.
I may exist
But my presence is not felt,
Not heard,
Not seen.

I am nothing once again.

And I thought I'd never go back...
But now look at where I am.
Sitting in the passenger seat of a minivan
I try to hold back all of the feelings
That have crept forward into my mind.

Today, I saw you.
Also something I've never thought would happen again.
You were driving past in your old, blue F-150.
I only caught a glimpse,
But in that glimpse I saw every hope and dream of us
That I've ever had.
Then I blinked, and it was all over.

And now I might want to plunge my worm and hook
Back into the same lake I found you.
But for all I know
You could be on belonging to another
And I just know that they wouldn't let you go.

I was never enlightened on what to do
When someone shattered my heart,
But it happened anyway.
He took it and crumpled it
Before he went and tore it all apart.
I wasn't taught that you shouldn't look back...
So I learned to cry.
I thought the best was to be bitter
Not to just up and forget it all.
I didn't know that you should smile
And move on with your life.
Make your own joy, because I was all I really had.

All the movies they hadn't done it right.
They didn't show me that you should act
Like nothing was ever wrong.
They didn't tell me that people change and move on.
That's why I didn't know how to respond
When he left me on the street
My hands pressed to my head, my feet chasing after him.

I was never told a person wasn't worth
The pain,
The tears,
The fight,
Simply because no one ever talked about this.
School didn't have a class that eased the heartbreak,
Didn't have any extracurriculars for the ones
Who looked so woebegone over someone
Who never gave a **** about them in the first place.
They never offered up a panacea
For the scholars who thought their life was ending
Because they were lamenting over a pseudo, a sham.
They had classes for foreign languages
And math
And history too.
But not a single class about what to do
About a heart so damaged the loved drained out from the bottom
And created an abyss so deep
Not even Floyd Collins would dare venture in.

So for everyone who's never experienced
A sadness so blue,
I will tell you about what to do.
When you are told not to love someone anymore
Go ahead, continue on
Just don't let him know.
Don't show any emotion when you pass him on the street
Or when you hear his name from across the room.
You can cry, that's acceptable,
But if you ever notice he's watching you
You go on and smile and act like you're having a **** good time.
And maybe you will eventually convince yourself you are.
Maybe not in the next day,
Or month,
Or even year,
But eventually he'll fade from your mind
Like the words written across the mirror with your finger
After a burning hot shower.
And if all else fails,
Just know to never go back
Because, darling, I know you're stronger that that.

I wish he would have told me how to live without him,
Not just that it was a necessity to.
But why do I seem to think I still need him?
Why is is I can't breathe when I don't have him?
I think about him and my chest tightens around my heart and lungs
Like a boa constrictor extracting life from its prey.

He was an awe- inspiring dream for me
Drifting through my dark mind
His resplendence playing through and through.
Even after he was gone
His disposition still shone brighter than a burning star.

I sit and brood, desiring that he'll resurface later in life.
It's all I can really do.
I have no idea where he is now
He could be within proximity
But he also could be a significant distance away.
But still his voice of pure splendor
Resonates in my head
Getting louder
                        And louder
                                           And louder
With each verse thrown at me
With each verse I can still remember uttered from his lips.

I detest the fact he honestly believes
That I'm a better person without him.
How can I be better without him
If he's the one that inspires me to do my best?
When he's the person who comforts the beasts inside my head?
He may not be able to stop the storm
But he's the one to bring an umbrella.
Maybe he can't turn the tide
But he'll bring a life raft for the both of us.
So how could he have the audacity to say something like that
When he doesn't look at the two side of the same coin?

I sit and write poems
Stanza after stanza dedicated to him
Hoping he will one day stumble upon my works
And know- Because if he reads them he will know-
That it was truly all for him.
So I will continue to pour my soul into my oeuvre
And spill my blood on pages.
Pages that will hold the scars,
But most likely never be viewed by the eyes of my beloved,
My world,
My dream,
My heart,
My everything.

Dramatic loops and swirls
Messily covered the manila page
Scrawled too quickly.

His goodbye was too sudden
Just dropping like an atomic bomb over my heart
Destroying everything within proximity.

The lasting effects are stuck on me
An abrasion I carry under my skin
Like a heavy weight everyday.

I passed the pain down to my liver today
Trying to drown out memories
And trying to stop the voice in my head

Stop it from crying
Stop it from yelling his name over and over
Like a broken record stuck on the worst song

But alas nothing has been able to silence myself
Not cheap, bad *** with strangers
Or toxins that help erase images.

I'm stuck in my own mind
Where I'm completely unaccompanied
Except for him, of course.