My little heart ♡

“I’m not sure if the pain I am in now is the craving for you to touch me or if my body is slowly falling out of love with the person I once loved with everything I had.”

You still have a lot of my heart.

““I’m so sorry to all the people I hurt while I was hurting.””

“I couldn’t write a word about it, although I died in my head.”

There is no poetry to falling out of love just a stuttering engine a sad space in your mouth where roses once bloomed knees bent forehead to the tips of your hands asking whatever deity you believe in to put that feeling back make it stay give you something that lasts give you something that doesn’t die like roses always do

“I love you.” “That’s not what I asked,” he says and it’s like his eyes have hands of their own, hands that rummage around in your chest until they find your heart and rip it out through your throat.  “I know,” you say quietly, “I know what you want me to say.” If you could cry you would, but the words leave you barren, leave you incapable of shedding tears or lies or some little bit of false hope that would stop breaking your heart and his in two. Your leg is shaking in a way that it hasn’t in a long time. Like it hasn’t since he was everything you wanted and didn’t need and nothing could dissuade you of the first or convince you of the second.  “So say it,” he says, and you think the words are supposed to be angry, but they’re not. They’re choked and desperate and you think you could withstand his anger. But not this, not the way your words have wound themselves around his throat and squeezed until his windpipe collapsed in on itself.  Maybe you are still in love with him. After all, if you weren’t, would you still be able to feel his pain like this? Feel it like it’s yours to carry and yours to heal? “I don’t think I can,” you whisper. He opens his mouth to respond but then your mouth open and runs away with all the words that you wish would stay locked between your teeth. “You don’t understand, I’m still trying to understand. I’m still trying to understand how I can look at you and want everything for you. And I do, I want everything for you - I want that 700 hundred dollar guitar that your dad won’t buy and for your parents to stay together forever and for you to be so happy that the sun is jealous of the way you smile. I want you to be in love.” Your voice cracks on that last word and he winces like he knows what’s coming next.  “But I don’t want to be the one give you those things anymore,” you say. “I don’t want to be the one that makes you laugh or smile or write silly love songs. I did once, when I was -” There is a beat of hesitation, a space where your heart should beat but doesn’t. “When I was in love with you,” you finish. You still can’t cry but you wish you could. Wish these words released some of your pain without giving him anymore to carry. “I - ” His mouth clamps shut. As if his jaw is the only part of him with any sense of self preservation. He was always like that. Doing first and explaining later, like his mouth possessed every ounce of restraint that his body didn’t. He looks down instead and you can see the tick of his jaw, the way his back teeth grind against each other. Grind up the words that might hurt you as much as yours hurt him into nothing but dust.  "Say it,“ you whisper. "We’ve never hid the truth from each other. Why start now?” He looks at you with an amount of venom that finds it way from the air to your bloodstream, directly to your heart. “I think I hate you a little bit right now,” he says but the words are as bitter as they are harsh. “But I guess that means I still love you a little too, doesn’t it?” The words don’t hurt as much as they should. Maybe when you’re in love with someone, their words are more than words. They are living, breathing things that inhabit some space in you. They are immortal with no expiration date in sight and the love gives them the power to ruin you or heal you. And maybe, when you’re done being in love with someone, their words go back to being just that. Words that can be swept up and abandoned on the side of the road because once upon a time, they might’ve meant something more. And now they don’t.