There was something of October that reminded me to make sure you were still there. In the morning when I woke I rolled to your side to see you breathing softly and slowly like a babies first good nights rest. Something about last October reminded me of when he left without a warning or a note that I could crumple up and burn in a fire full of depression and self doubt. I curled up in the armchair facing you just watching you stay and promise to never let go. I wanted my old lover to be that way too, I wanted him to walk on fall leaves and sip cinnamon tea as the nights grew longer as time went. I wished upon a lonely star that he would be just like you but all the hoping turned into sorrow for nothing but his shoe prints were left upon the bottom stair and a string of his curly hair on my rain jacket.

If this is a safe space, then let me speak honestly for a moment

Because I’ve been wanting to disappear, and I’m trying to decide if I should vanish all at once or if I could let myself slowly start to fade away.
Taking my time with the goodbyes, as I’m hugging family members I’m watching my finger tips regress to their first knuckle joints behind their backs.

Going to shake an old friends hand and realizing I’m only able to offer them a short section of my forearm.  They try not to be rude about it, exchanging nice to see you’s and hope you’ve been wells.

Once I couldn’t see my arms anymore and my legs began to fade I finally felt fearful and maybe even regret..
I wanted to come see you before it happened for good, before there was nothing left to see. I can feel you looking for the parts of me that should be there, no hands to hold, no arms to hug you, my torso was starting to slim and slip away like grains of sand through an hour glass.

I felt my breath tighten, you don’t expect to feel your last pieces fading but this was hurting much more than I ever thought it would and I couldn’t let you see me like that so I ran, and I ran far.

Just as I feel like I’m drifting off I hear you call for me and I realize this was a mistake and that I never was meant to disappear or fade away, I was never meant to say good byes, at least not so soon, maybe not now and maybe not ever.

Turns out vanishing all at once always was an acquired taste and I had no pallet for it, there are no second thoughts. At least I’ve began to be okay with the process, the gradual fading has brought me comfort, but I could never leave here.. At least not without saying, goodbye.

I looked off in the distance, a horizon of mountains strung together, the whole range atop an alpine lake.

I looked out only to be fixated on your tanned skin wadding off in the water, the same skin that I’d watched darken in the summers sun, the same skin I became so familiar with under the covers of blankets and snow. Layered but much paler than your tone now, it always was winter months that inspired warmer thoughts.

But there you are, you’re no longer the warm thoughts I pined to grasp.
You’re here in view and more than I could’ve ever imagined, watching you unlace your boots and rip your socks off in rolled clumps as you marched through the overly saturated banks still recovering from the past, the thawing warmth of spring at the end of a snow season, just like you.
Taking high steps, you feel the mud tugging at your heels, attempts to hang on, to cling instead of breaking clean free only to be washed away with another plummeting progressive step. Each part of you beginning to drown a little more in the experience.

Broken bones just being set, beginning to mend as I left home
Still getting to know the new parts of me, adjusting to, plates and screws holding on, bones still feel loose, cracked and used from all the distant memories and vast views cast from the rear view, pay attention now because this is your healing, these feelings are stitches in skin, patience, feeling the thread pull you together from within, wait now for there’s is no room for wearing thin

I can feel you,
not just in the morning when I’m imagining it’s your hair my fingers are running through or pretending my blankets are your legs bundled closely and intertwining mine
I feel your angst and anger, a tension will brood into my room enshrouding my bed like a canopy, immediately casting a shadow across my face.
It doesn’t anger me, I feel connected and just want to convey.
I’m with you
Never against you
Yes, darling it’s true, I can feel you.

I wish I had never fallen for you
because eventually
I landed.