poison

i lost you

and so i lost you. and so i finally accepted you’re not coming back. and so i’m writing another poem about you, pounding your name on the page, screaming into my pillow on a sunday, preparing for another week without you. 

and i wish i could let you die but every day is a reminder that you’re not here and every poem smells like your sweaters and i’m tired of writing about letting go. i wish i could write about love again, but love is written in your goodbye, love is hidden in last year when your arms were wrapped around my neck, love is just a word without you. 

because being without you feels like being lost in the woods with a blindfold on. being without you feels like stumbling over my own skin, being stranded on a deserted ship; every breath feels like drowning. 

and i hate to be so melodramatic, but i don’t know how to survive in a world without you in it—it’s like being chased by monsters without a weapon, it’s like a losing battle, it feels like giving up and giving in—and so i wish you didn’t exist or you and i didn’t exist or maybe just that i don’t exist  because being without you is hopeless and dreary and dark—it feels like never being able to trust again, like hard work doesn’t pay off, like wasted time and forgotten feelings. being without you feels like every plan i once held in the palm of my hands slipping through my fingers because i guess i just never imagined a life without you in it. i guess i never thought you’d go. 

now i sit and watch you leaving in my peripheral vision and wish it all away, wish you back, wish i wasn’t missing something that doesn’t exist anymore, but i miss it anyway. 

and so i lost you. and so i’m not really okay anymore, but when you ask, i’ll tell you i’m doing better and i hope you are too, work on moving on without you, and write you another poem.

—achingchest