I've been trying to write all day because things are ending for me
and I've been trying to find a way to tell you about it.
But it's merely been a lot of empty conversation
between me and my mother as she unpacks grocery bags after grocery bags
of food I haven't eaten all day.
I've spoken to the vase of flowers across from me about you.
Stared at the yellow center just searching my broken mouth
for the absolute way to tell you how sorry I am
that I didn't love you in all the right ways I could have.
How I want to believe in now instead of then and how I want
you to be here and hold my hand as I try to make some sense
of why such bad things happen to such good people.
How I'm not going to see you everyday come the end of summer.
How a huge part of myself is over and how I always thought I'd never be
that upset until I looked over at you and realized
that soon enough you'll disappear and I'll be left here.
I'll be left here without you looking over at me.
And I've been trying to write about that.

Been trying to write about it all day when it's 40 degrees in May.
How impossible it is to feel even colder than that
when I'm wrapped in blankets sitting in my kitchen chair
with gray light for reading all the words I just haven't written yet
about anything that I feel or anything that I want to say to you.
I want to tell you that I love you and that I hope we wind up together.
That I don't know what to say a lot of the time, but you help me
get everything out
and maybe that's not tonight .

I've been trying to write about the nostalgia that chokes me after midnight.
How I'm so tired of being lonely.
I just haven't written a thing all day and it's killing me.
I don't know what to say a lot of the time, but you help me
get everything out
and maybe that's not tonight, and maybe
after all this time I don't really need you to be mine.
But a lot of things are ending for me and I've got
so much more that I need to say.

You got out of work at eleven and I was there waiting for you.
Leaning against your car with my arms crossed,
hiding in the shadow of the security camera because no one
should have to see us like this before I made my peace or before
you tried to stop me.
You sauntered over with your hair fixed and your face black
from the powdered metal dust that stuck to your skin while you were doodling
on a notepad waiting for the tumbler to shut up and give you new parts
to start the process.

I've waited and waited for my parts to have back from you after you took them.
To start the process.
To be fine
once again.

With your hands in your pockets you angrily backhanded a reply to my fainted "hi"
above the noise of other workers clocking out their time cards,
punch in and punch out
"What are you doing here?"
I didn't think it needed an answer.
But since you questioned and since I've been silently mad for days and since
I'm almost to the breaking point I said something
that I can't remember in this late night, confused memory,
that went

Well since
you don't answer my calls and won't look at me and won't talk to me
just keep pushing past and past my presence in your life when you're looking
and in your mind when you're not,
I put myself here.
I put myself where you'd have to see me just so you could tell me
why it is you loved so deeply and left so quickly.

Then my eyes went hazy and my mouth fell sideways as you told me
something I expected to hear that still shocked my soul
because a large part of me that I don't like to admit
was still hoping for the answer I'd been praying for
or the realization of an epiphany you've had over loving me
as only a memory and wishing you could have it that real again.
But you clocked me-
punch in and punch out.
You used me to heal the bad stuff and then parted when you were done.
Parted and left me when you had what you needed
to get through another stubborn year of acting like you love me
but lying because you never really did.

I got in my car and waited at the factory red light
until it turned green and drove the opposite way you were leaving.
I watched the two headlights as they blurred themselves into direction.
I watched you and I knew that I had nothing to come back to.
Just empty words to be said and a desperate attempt
to get back what I thought I had again.

Covered in sweat,
hairs a mess,
lying between the curb and the pavement,
spewing out the alphabet in cursive
saying things you'll regret in the morning
making crowns out of cardboard beer boxes
because you think you're the ******* king,
news flash
you're just another kid to everyone else
you're not special
you're not any better than anyone else
because you can hold down your liquor longer
than the girl in the ripped white jeans
or the college boy who's been doing this since he was sixteen.
you're no better than anyone else
because you stay up until five in the morning,
forgetting how you got from one place to the other,
but oh wait sorry
I forgot we're young and this is what makes you you
I forgot that this was what you gave me up to do.
So I hope this makes you feel important,
I hope it replaces all the warmth I thought I was giving you
I hope it was worth hurting me for,
I hope it was worth trashing all that belief I put in you,
when you used to be my king
I hope the sweat sticks, the concrete cracks, you break your own heart
and I hope you wear your crown like the king you are.

I'm a stupid woman but you called me strong.
I took that with me when I left and always thought you were leaving too.
Turns out you're staying here.
And half of me
half my heart
considered everything just to stay.
Just to give it up and see if I could make something out of you
with just my hands and some deep night loving.
If maybe believing in you from the outside in
could make you smile in the mirror when you look at yourself in the morning.
I'm nakedly holding my love for you in my hands.
But I knew I had to go or you'd never take it.

I've dug enough graveyards in my life to earn myself a tombstone.
Script stupid love lyrics on the surface,
because that's all my beauty is made of.
Just some vulnerability I've conquered over all that time of knowing you
like this, in our way.
But you taught me that I don't have to bury myself any longer.
That loving myself means a lot more than if you love me back or not.
So I took that with me and now I've got a man.

He admires and reflects more of my happiness than his own.
There is a softness in his voice that I've never known.
And I don't have to try so hard to make him understand-
it's just effortless.
It's perfect because the pain isn't constant and because
we don't give up
on each other.

But know that I think about you all the time.
How much I would have liked to give it one last try.
I think about how much you gave me to smile about.
That you brought out a bigger version of who I'd become to be.
How without you I wouldn't be me.

I've been writing for what seems like forever about you.
In different ways I've been severed angry.
In manic ways I've been crazy for you.
I've cried over you, I've cried for you, I've cried beneath you.
I've been the weight under your thumb and the force that guides your arms.
I've held you and I've written about that in a thousand different ways.
When you've been too heavy and when you wouldn't let me
put my arms around you long enough for you to realize
that I'm here and I'm tired of saying it-
I've already written it down.  
It's been six years but it feels like forever.
It feels like I've said all I can say, but I'm not done speaking.
I'm not done yelling and I'm not done writing.

But there's only so many poetic ways to call you an *******.
There's only so many more nights
that I have you around close enough to feel you
and that's what I like to write about.
How I feel you.

You'll be gone soon and I haven't decided how to deal with that yet.
I just write about it because in some twisted ******* way I think that will fix it.
You're going away, but I won't tell you I miss you.
I'm not going to tell you that even if you beg me to say it.
Because that will make me weak and I need to learn
to be strong without you.

So when you get on your plane I won't be crying in the terminal.
I won't even make it to the airport actually,
because you don't want me there and I don't want to see you hate me
as the last sight of you before you go.
I'll be at home and when the clock strikes 6:45 I'll know you're leaving.
I know you'll be gone.
Then I'll crack open a bottle of red wine even though it's too early in the morning.
I'll sit on my couch and watch the sun come up without your existence,
pull out a pen and paper and write through you.
Write right black through you until the day has ended
which will feel like forever.
Forever, I'll write again.

I watched you drive your red truck around for years,
and years, and years with mulch in the back on a dead road
to a new job where you'd lay some grass and trim
trim back all the rustle that got in the way,
just like you cut me out because I was an obstacle
in your plan to ruin yourself.
I watched you drive your red truck around for years,
and years, and years when you didn't think I was still watching.
I did because you trained me how to fix you
when we were just fifteen and being twenty five means nothing
when you've been an adult since you were a kid,
had to grow up real quick if you wanted to control yourself
through every pretty little detail,
through every
pretty little feeling.

I thought I gave you feeling.
*******.
But I watched you for years, and years, and years
in your apartment on a black night carrying two cases of beer inside.
And that might sound creepy but I think twelve years of kissing you
constitutes it being okay that I watch you just to make sure you're okay.
I watched you.
You didn't know it
but I cared.
I never really wanted you to know that because it made me feel inferior.
Made me feel like you had power over me,
and since you had to have power over everything else
I didn't want you to have that satisfaction over me.

So I'll watch you drive your red truck around for years,
and years, and years without feeling.
Until you spin out at the dead end and wind face up in the windshield,
staring at stars that remind you of my eyes,
finding yourself right where you've always been
only this time I won't be at your side.

I was in a real bad place this time last year.
I felt *****
all the time.
And all I wanted was to be with someone
who could make me feel even worse.

So I threw myself over people that could make me
feel a little right and hell of a lot wrong.
I poisoned the revival that was my passioned split,
and I kept binding myself to nights that had
no definite ending and put me in spacey places,
tripped me back to the things I wanted to forget,
always winding up in a grass bed with a body
that wouldn't recognize me in the sunlight but felt good.
Good in the way that made me feel wrecked,
empty, wretched, and sterilized
like a bad blood wound.

I was in a real bad place and I want you to know you put me there.
Not because I want you to feel guilty, not because its my own
sick revenge on the things you tore within me.
But I want you to know because I'm trying to explain to you,
why it is I did those things and I why it is I couldn't talk to you
when you begged me for answers, or for reasons, or if I was okay.
I want you to know I wasn't okay.
Not because I want you to apologize or tell me it wasn't my fault.
But I want you to know because I'm trying to explain to you,
how I could feel so terribly and how that could feel so good.

The pain was better, yes better, because it was easier.
I clothed myself in darkness, painted my world without the color
I always believed you gave me.
I was in a real bad place and I want you to know I might still be there.
Because you're holding me now and it would be unfair if I didn't let you in
on the secrets I kept about how I dealt with the pieces after you.
Not because I expect us to be together, not because I want
everything to go back to the way it was before you left.
But I want you to know because I'm trying to explain to you,
that I don't ever want us to feel this way again.
I don't ever want to see you mask your happiness
or think you don't deserve more safety than you have,
more love than your given
more laughs than you create.

I might still be there, but you don't have to be.
You don't have to comfort me,
for the wrong or even the right reasons.
You don't have to tell me that I'm alright or that I'm beautiful.
I feel ugly all the time and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be,
and I want you to know
you don't have to stick around for me.