Poem #6

Could you just tell me why?

Why you made me a space to lay down all my broken pieces then swept through and sent them flying and disappeared.

Could you take this loving ache from inside my chest?

Could you burn this bridge I stand on the opposite side from still hoping for the best?

Like a child who doesn’t know how to accept when something’s really gone, I can’t bring myself to cope with what went wrong.

Still hoping you’ll return.

And I feel so stupid.

Still believing all the words you said. 

Insisting you meant it when you said the things you said.

But here I am. And here you’re not.

So life moves on and I fall in line with the way you just left me behind.

Like a captain, I went down with the sinking ship. Sitting at the bottom of the ocean, wishing you’d drown in it with me.

Even at the side of someone new, part of me still screams at the thought of you.

And I tell my friends I’d never let you come back. But if they’re smart, they don’t believe that.

Because months later, I still believe we’ll get that dinner and you’ll tell me you’re sorry.

And I’ll accept your apology, so I can find some kind of inner peace.

But I don’t want to keep you after that.

I just can’t help but keep this haunting feeling that drags behind me.

So I’d love to cut it with a pair of scissors, sharp and severing, because it’s not fair.

I can’t keep you, but I can’t keep out the thought of you.

You were different. You were gentle.

Til you were brutal. So fucking brutal.

Showed me it’s not okay to make a mistake.

That my mess up wasn't worth understanding and grace.

That you’d just disappear one day.

So how do I un-know the person I wrapped my identity around?

How do I let go of a life I built around your expectations?

Now how do I let someone in, when you told me you were setting an example for the real thing?

Now how am I supposed to believe the real thing isn’t just the same as everything before?

It was all riding on the words you said.

And every time you touched me it always went to my head.

So how do I go from writing you love letters I’ll never send to someone who now seems like they were never even there?

Day after day it feels like I made you up.

Like I designed the perfect guy but it just wasn’t real. Like my mind was playing tricks on me.

Thank god I never bought that Christmas present. With the national park stickers.

Because I always remembered how you wanted to travel and I thought it was perfect.

Just like I thought you were too.

But disappointment disguises itself as a 29 year old man with sad eyes and a stable job, who pays the bill and drives you home and kisses you goodnight.

Fluttered heartbeats are a lie in the shadows as your headlights fade out while you drive away.

And Halloween was more than dressing up as characters we get to hide in.

Was a night of tears, when you weren’t here, after waiting hours and hours, cancelling plans just to end up all alone, crying in the bathroom watching my makeup run, feeling emptier than stupid.

So please…throw away the paintings that I poured myself into.

And please…give my favourite book to Goodwill.

So that you have nothing left of me.

Just like I have nothing left of you.

Other than a sense of betrayal and a heart that’s scared to fully fall again, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hopefully one day it stops.

And I wish I could go where you are, to execute some kind of vengeful drive by. To break your windows or slash your tires.

But I know better. I know when to wave my white flag.

Even at half mast, knowing I’m still weak and would carry the guilt if I gave you even just a taste of how you made me feel.

So I hope you never know the power you hold over my head and my life. Since you had my heart right there in the palm of your hand and you made a fist and squeezed.

But will you not look down at your arm and feel the blood as it still bleeds?

I just can’t comprehend how you suddenly just don't want anything to do with me.

How you said we would talk it out and just withdrew, fading into the background until you were nothing but a memory.

Nothing but a few months in the year I turned 25.

But it clearly meant nothing to you.

So I deleted your number and watched you block me on socials.

Like I was some type of crazy to be shut out.

Like I was some kind of unmanageable you threw your hands up at and walked away from.

And don’t you think maybe you ruined a perfectly reasonable girl who stood by you at your worst?

And do you know you made that girl afraid to show her worst again?

So now she blames herself.

Saying she shouldn’t have stood up for herself and maybe you’d still be here.

She still thinks she should’ve shrunk herself so small to keep you.

Even though being around you started to feel lonely.

Caring started to feel like jailed pining, lying to stay by your side.

The “real thing” started sounding better than the thing you were doing to “prepare” me for it.

Because I want to be someone’s wife, not just a body to pass the time.

I didn’t want to listen to all the other dates while I tried to picture their face as I wondered how long it’d take for you to see me as someone to replace.

And I think back to the cold nights when I’d stay, when you never offered me your jacket, maybe that was a sign that you’d never keep me warm, that you’d always leave me cold. Til the rigor mortis set in.

Leaving me paralysed, while you haunt me like a sleep demon.

And I pray to god, every single day, that one of these days I’ll finally wake up.