you fell in love.

i would spot the north star

in between telling you my

deepest secrets.

one of those nights,

you told me,

“i’m just glad i met you.”

i looked at you then,

and i didn’t know what shone brighter:

the stars or your eyes.

“me too,” i said.

funny what a difference a year can make.

i used to try to tell different stories when i wrote:

ones with happy endings,

or ones where it hurt, but eventually, it was okay.

i told stories where everything was so much worse

than anyone could’ve ever imagined,

or ones where nothing really happened at all.

but now,

no matter what,

the story always comes back to

you.

flatline

i feel our love

like a heart in my hand.

every time the beat falters,

i am afraid it will not start again.

sometimes the blood

pools in my palm,

dripping

down my wrist

like rainwater.

i cannot handle a love

that i have to kick-start

every morning,

i cannot carry that unknown of

will he love me when he wakes up?

when the beat stumbles

i wonder if maybe

it would be better

if it never started again,

if maybe holding a dying thing

is so much worse

than setting down the dead.

your love was a hungry thing.

it never quite understood

that it had already sucked me dry,

that i was always going to come up

empty.

they called us star-crossed lovers.

and maybe that was true.

maybe we were doomed from the start.

but it wasn’t the stars that made these wounds.

it wasn’t fate that broke this heart.

it was you.

it was all

you.

breaking down

i watched you take a sledgehammer

to our foundation for months

but couldn’t figure out why everything

felt so unsteady.

i saw the cracks snaking up the walls

and took too long to connect them to you.

you see, a house is only as strong as its base,

and so is love.

i remember telling you

that what we had built

wasn’t as strong as we thought it was,

and you agreed, but what did you do to help fix it?

you were kissing somebody else—

crack—

not speaking to me—

crack—

lying to me about her (and her, and her)—

crack, crack, crack—

until i was standing on a pile of rubble,

staring helplessly at you,

and you were saying,

“i don’t know how we got here,”

but how did you not?

how did you not know,

when you were the one

holding the hammer?

and why were you so surprised

when i decided i didn’t want to

live there anymore?

who was i?

i would love to be able to remember

who i was before i fell in love.

what did i think it was like?

how did i think it felt?

was i wrong? was i right?

i would love to be able to remember

who i was before you broke my heart.