There we were, 1 AM. In separate rooms, on separate beds, with separate thoughts, in separate heads.
I keep wondering if you remember. But it may be time to start asking myself why I can’t forget.
My rib cage has been unzipped for quite some time. My heart’s exposed. I recall our warm memories and feel particularly cold. A closed chapter in my life that I’ll never reopen. The parts of me that love you are so very heavy, now that you want nothing to do with them. Every day I wake up loving you and hating myself. You are chipping off little fragments of my soul and storing them in your eyes. My lips are lonely, full of kisses with no destination.
I have my heart shoved down my throat, unable to swallow misplaced love and misdirected emotion. Removed my eyes from their sockets and I’m slicing out images of us. Carved out your name from my lips and shakily handing it back to you. Mutilating my nose until I can no longer breathe. Tearing apart my flesh, exposing my rawness, but allowing you to bleed out of me. Decapitating my head from my body so I can no longer control my ‘you-soaked’ actions.
I’m a living breathing reality, but emotionally vacant. I have got to learn how to wear confidence like it’s my skin and wear sanity like it runs through my veins. Reminders that I owe it to myself to not owe anyone anything. This face is a mask for misery. I am still living. Unfortunately, I am lifeless.
I feel numb to love’s design. I have to stumble back into myself and untangle “us” and untangle “we.” I have to start again with uncertainty.
I’ve never been struck by lightening, but I’ve heard you say, “Some part of me will always love you.” And it must feel something like that. I’m usually sad, and the extent of happiness I feel most often stems from being in love, but that in itself is saddening in some ways.
I loved your kisses, and I’d kiss you again if I could, even if it means nothing. I am nothing. We are nothing. Cheers to a last kiss. I want to be what you think about when you burn yourself while cooking, when you shut a door a little too loudly, but especially when you break a glass. I broke every window in the house because I want you to know that the sound of glass breaking is your name in my mouth.
I already know what death feels like from that time you breathed your soul into my hands and it just went right through my fingers. You are the unfinished book. The one collecting dust on that shelf at the end of the hall. But the thing is, I don’t want to know how you end. The future of our expanding universe scares me, but so do your tears, and the universe is only nearly as important to me because it created you.
I’m cryptic autobiography and you are cryptic escapism. I am in mine, and you do everything you can to keep out of yours. We froze time, but being near you keeps thawing it out. Maybe I should have lived forever with my memories. Instead, I chose to die with you. I have planted my pain in a field of patience. Learning the more lost you are, the more you have to look forward to. Rotting things do not make for good keepsakes. I remember this when I find myself loving someone for who they used to be. The sad thing is that sooner or later I’ll write about love and none of it will involve you anymore.
I am letting my love be my legacy: May people be forever changed by who I am and what I meant to them. When my life gradually gets better, be on the lookout for my “Hello.”
image- paulternate