Maybe we were just two people

bad for each other

I used to picture us in rocking chairs, out on the porch. We’d be waiting for our grandchildren coming up the drive. But now that picture’s gone, and every time I see those rocking chairs, yours is empty.

My heart lay asleep in a glass jar, kept safe on my shelf. Until you walked into my life and promised to be gentle, promised to help. So, I gave the jar to you, asked you to hold on tight, and instead you did the opposite. The jar shattered, and my heart fell to the floor. Now my heart is ripped and torn from all the pieces of glass, and I don’t know what to do. All this mess, because I believed in you.

Everybody said to let you go, said we were no good together. So, I walked away, after too many fights in the back of the cab. But your memory stayed, and it follows me everywhere. I close my eyes and we’re on the beach, sitting cross-legged, talking about all the places we want to go. I turn over in the sheets and the pillow still smells of your perfume. Tell me how I am supposed to move on when I’m haunted by all the things you are.

Did you mean to make my world stop turning? Do you remember the moment we stopped working? Why are you holding on when we are so clearly lost? If you ever even loved me, then break my heart quickly, because the ache is killing me slowly.

You are somewhere else, with someone new, drowning in her scent, hands lost in her hair. And yet I’m still here with all the moments we shared, not knowing how I’m supposed to have those moments with anyone else.

We sat in your car, with leftover takeout, and you listed all the things wrong with us. But all I could think about was how I wanted to fix what we’d broken. Thinking back now, even after all the time you’ve been gone and everything we’ve been through, what broke my heart that night was when you said, “You’ll find someone new.”

The grief lies in the space between us. It’s made a home in the nights we don’t speak and the days we ignore each other.

Will anyone

love me

the way I am

Will the loneliness

in my heart

be filled

Will the way

I love

ever be enough

She sat in the car the other night, the headlights shining over the driveway. She clicked the remote to open the electric gate, but it stopped, spinning on the gears, stuck in movement, unable to go further. And she felt her life as this, wanting to come home but stuck in the driveway, so close but so far away.

The universe stares back from her mirror

cloudy and unsure