I Probably Will Survive

I can't shake him

After you left I told myself If I ever met someone who couldn’t feel the weight of the word when I told them what your name was I would use every last inch of them to bury the pieces of you I was still carrying with me I left the worst parts of us sewn into her warmest blanket and bed sheets and I still wonder if when she wraps them around herself my memory cuts her the way yours still cuts me despite the pretty lies I fed her and the grip her tongue had on my name I was a stranger in her bedroom I should have given her a little more forewarning that this was never meant to be mutual that I was only interested in leaving just as quickly as she would be falling in love I would be letting go of the both of you we undressed together she took off the simple cloth that covered her agonizing curves while I removed what remained of my moral armor tried to ignore the way it screamed at me begging me to remember the promises I had made to myself to never become this person In the night while I was whispering your name in her ear that armor rusted away on the bedside Now I am left with only pieces of the man I used to be with your fingerprints and promises etched into my breastplate an abandoned relic of my adolescence left for the jungle of my adult mistakes to reclaim I didn’t realize just how many feet of innocence and wasted youth I would have to dig through to bury you deep enough that you would never be able to crawl back out and haunt me you are the ghost stories I tell myself the reason I can’t sleep alone for very long without losing my mind the reason I am afraid of the dark I have only you to thank for this monster I am at war with every woman who is willing to put her hand inside mine scared that I will once again find myself punishing another innocent soul for your sins I have written too many elegies in your absence I have whispered your name into the darkness so many times it now comes more often than my own heartbeat I have forgotten what love is and I am sorry for the casualties I have left behind me If after I am gone they cannot wash me clean of these regrets Burn my body and scatter my ashes between the gym wall where we first kissed and the harbor lights where you suddenly gave up and left and then since there is already a fire burn down everything turn my town into a parking lot its the only place that still bears witness to the burden you have become the beast that I am and the love that we shared And clearly if it can give birth to creatures like you and me nothing good ever came from there in the first place

I pitied myself until I realized I lost someone who could not love me and he lost someone who loved him far more than he deserved.