Seven months since you last were here.
And in those seven months, some of them I didn’t think I’d survive. But here’s my reminder, that part of me did.
Month 1:
Id wake up still searching for you. My therapist calls it denial. I called it smoothies and avoiding all liquid eyeliner.
It was witnessing how much was tied to you. It was feeling like my skin was being burned alive when someone asked about you.
It was my identity lost in the translation of how easily you left.
Month 2:
It was Christmas. Receiving all the gifts I bought you and letting them pile up like bricks knowing I’d never get to see you open them. It was wondering if you missed the way our hands fit like puzzle pieces.
Anytime your songs came on I contemplated skipping them.
But most importantly it was still smoothies.
Month 3:
We spoke. I’ll never forget how stern your voice was when you told me it was over.
My memory of your gentleness being erased in real time, I told you I loved you for the last time.
I regretted telling you how I missed your laugh, your stupid wind breaker jackets.
And Despite every chamber in my heart echoing your name, my rib cage ready to snap hearing your voice, what good is love if it isn’t safe anymore? If it isn’t willing to be understood? If it isn’t gut wrenching vulnerability asking to be held?
I was angry.
No more smoothies.
Month 4:
I’m in a courtroom, my worst memories auctioned off to me and I’m holding my breath.
My anger sitting at the corner of my jaw,
My grief laying in my lap where your head used to be.
I couldn’t understand why.
I still can’t understand.
Despite seeing my heart, witnessing my pain at its greatest extent, bones and flesh infront of you, indifference dressed up in a suit and tie. You couldn’t look at me.
And still, Every memory, every corridor leading back to you, became something I couldn’t touch.
Accepting the things you can’t change,
Accepting loving you couldn’t fix what was broken.
I still find myself some days hating you.
But that’s easier than the pain of being stabbed in the back.
It’s easier to be angry than admit being stripped of who I thought I knew, who I was when I was with you.
That version of my life gone and yet fragments of it still remain.
They bring me peace that at one point, it was us.
At one point you were my home and the safest place was between your shoulder blades.
And I’ll keep saying goodbye, I’ll keep writing you into existence as long as it takes to stop loving you.
But I don’t know if that day will ever come.
