our relationship was notifications
banners I expected daily, without fail
ones that made my heart skip a beat
every single one i counted in my mind
they fell like coins in a jar, the clank- a smile

they morphed over times and months rolled themselves tighter and tighter, crushing us in its grasps

every time i see a notification
it’s not from you
i know
it’s almost never from you
and the coins in the jar have cracked it with each fall
and the shards dig into my heart every time i see
it isn’t you
i don’t know how to stop hoping that you’ll come back to me
that maybe one day i’ll get more notifications and it’ll be from you and-
i’ll smile
smiles seem so foreign to me now
what i do know is that it hurts

every notification that isn’t you is stabbing, twisting
and i turned them all off after I finally swirled into nothing but a cloud of pain
and i played music so loud i hoped it would crack through my skull
and i let myself dance
and forget

so what were we in the end?
us?
just a mass of notifications

how did they string together so well?
how did they fix themselves into a shape that convinced me to fall in love?

and how did they give themselves so much power
that now i feel myself disappearing bit by bit every time i see them

i’ve almost grown afraid of them

notifications
that’s all we were
and they themselves
omens of pain

but maybe that’s all we were too