it occurred to me tonight
that when i break
and when i lose pieces of myself
i was leaving behind a trail of those pieces.
i never realized that someone had been picking them up
and subtly putting them back in my pocket.
it was you
it was always you
you said it yourself,
when something i say or do offends you in some way or you start to defend—get defensive of it, i mark it down in my head and make a note of it.
maybe i hadn't been as careful as i thought.
and it hit me that you were different.
no, no, not in the way of you're different than most guys.
no, no, never like that.
but different as in you'd learnt the language of my heart
and i hadn't realized.
i don't know how to explain this
or how to put it in words
after picking up so many pieces,
following me into the dark alleys with red footprints,
you've come to know me better than i know myself.
i asked you to explain the difference between justice and revenge
maybe it was a test
to see if you were as naive as i thought you were.
oh, how wrong i was.
i was the naive one.
i tried to convince you they were the same thing.
i failed.
and then you said those words, and i understood everything.
because all those things i hide from people,
all those walls i build back up again and again and again and again
i thought for someone to know me
and understand me
they would have to have been there with me
to have known what happened
to know where the scars came from.
and i am beginning to cry as i type this
because i realize now
that it isn't the person who was there for the scars that mattered,
but the person who saw the scars years after and didn't question it and stayed.
i am beginning to cry because i realize
that it's the person who looked at the scars and told you they didn't matter.
it isn't the person who kisses them during sex,
but instead the person who looked at them and tells you that the story behind them isn't relevant
because it isn't needed to get to know you
because it doesn't define you.
and i understood that i had underestimated you, that i had mistaken your heart for naïveté, that..
that if i asked you what my favorite color was, i understood that you wouldn't just say blue, you'd say the color of that cute girl's hair. the color of the ocean, the color of the sky on a cloudless day, the color of magic and the color of stars, the color of moonlight and songs.
simply, you said those words... and i understood.
i understood. the fog.. cleared. the darkness clouding my vision cleared. the smoke cleared. the smudged words and memories cleared.
god fucking damn it.
i thought you didn't know that side of me.
that that side of me didn't even exist.
but looking back through that side of me
i realize that those footprints weren't the demons behind me
but yours.
that those blood stained pieces weren't from my blood,
but yours
that you had been the one fighting off those things.
