POETRY THAT STAYS

Loved and Left

I learned a lot from loving you. You taught me that love was never exactly the same thing I should expect to stay just because I heavily wanted it to.

 And that there's always one person who loved more and perhaps in our case, it's me. I learned how to cage my words because it loses your interest. 

You taught me that someone was capable of controlling me, and gave me scripts to memorize for a week. Loving you taught me to stay myself out from my art since it was unappreciated and that I should paint my fingers on your skin when you needed me. 

I learned how to set myself aside and put you first, and brought myself in your flames and came out in ashes. You taught me that giving everything and loving someone so hard and so real will never be enough to make one stay. 

You taught me so much about love and lost and life. You taught me how to break myself and burn myself with your cigarettes and blame myself for my clumsiness.

 I learned a lot by watching all sorts of goodbyes in your unpredictable tongue and you taught me to hold on to my patience and longing for a twist of fate the next morning. Loving you made me realize a lot of things---things I had and lost.

 I learned a lot from you. I learned a lot from loving you. I learned a lot from leaving you."