all the fireflies have gone
and I am abandoned in darkness
here, I can feel the emptiness
of where love used to live

beautiful vices come to me
after midnight when I let go
of thinking and controlling

it’s the rush, you know?
of saying yes when no is
the answer that balances
this version of perfection

I’m egged on by the desire
to tip the scales just a little
and feel the lash of heat
that reminds me I’m alive

to be good and know better
but to simply choose not to
is the true flicker of freedom

floating along the river
of my own aching
facing a starless sky
a beautiful nothing

Half-written poems made up her life. Fragments of concessions to feelings. All of them, deconstructions of moments that when combined, create a facet of clarity.

“I woke up in a bittersweet desperation/falling into the sun/that staticky feeling/hum of faint memories/I dreamt of you last night and it felt like torture/everyone’s reality is based on their own circumstances/With me, it will never be easy/I have a worn-down longing for a love that never was/breathe deeply for four seconds/I hope we find our way/We can’t be afraid of losing each other/something inside me felt indifferent/On the verge of collapse/I bury my feelings for you, only to dig them up later/I fall deeper and deeper/You are cruel/a million crushing breaths/We only wanted desire and knew nothing of devotion/the inability to control drives you/7 am alarm goes off wildly/buckling under pressure/My habit of looking back/always devastating/Just a reckless moment, filling me to the brim/So lovely, so tenuous/Yes, I’m a *******/how soul-shaking it would be”

Somehow, the incomplete feels more whole.

She hated that he would always be the unanswerable question in her head. The lingering enigma that taunted her before sleep. It never mattered the amount of time that went by or the happy memories she made after him.

The night that she left him behind, she learned a lesson about rationale. The right choice can be the most painful—she was prepared for that. What she didn’t expect was the anguish of freedom; for the mercy she gave her heart to haunt her.