I let myself
make sanctuaries
in the crest of your lips;
they were eventually
washed away by the rush
of midnight coffees.
I let myself spell out your name
with the first letters
of my unsent emails
in exchange for a sigh of poems.
I let myself kiss the rims of my teacup
the way I kissed you
two days before you left.
I let myself ignore
the pile of dishes
to trace the tile grouts
that connect to your heartbeat,
and it led to a void
of dismantled veins
and arteries.

I let you
leave the littlest
specks of your scent
on my pillows,
I let you
dance with me
like my favorite sunset hue
danced with the sky
and soon,
the dusk came
and the music notes
and the piano tunes
all faded away.
I let you
write your name
in-between the lines
of my favorite songs
and now all I got
are mixtapes that scream
for you to come back,
darling, as if the cracks in my  voice
and the rips in my lungs
weren't enough.

I let you
sparkle like a big-city-dream
to small-town girl;
let you carve your lies
at the tip of my cigarettes.
I let myself
dream of cuddle nights
and picket-fence
kinda happy ever afters.
I let myself
walk in pj's
and bask in the ruins
of the weekend
that you left.

And darling,
maybe it wasn't because
you didn't love me;

maybe it was because I didn't love myself.

And I ran out of metaphors
writing about losing you —
making it sound like a heartbreak,
so profound,
so beautiful.
the straight-out-of-the-films type.

But I lost you.
I lost you.
I lost you,
even the echoes know that now.

And I realized,
no words could make it sound less of an agony.
No words could make it beautiful.
No words could make it poetic.
No words could make it hurt less, darling.

I lost you.
I lost you.
I lost you.

And that was it.