trash

i. I loved you the whole time but was always too scared to say it so maybe that makes me the coward after all. ii. We’re always running for our lives and we both know we’ll never find a savior at the bottom of a bottle but we keep on looking anyway. iii. You have to understand – the other day all the monarch butterflies were beginning to migrate and it was like a storm of them on the freeway and they just kept smashing into the windshield and it took everything in me to keep it together in the passenger seat. Because around this time last year, I was writing poems about us and you were making winter look like spring and the birds and the butterflies never went anywhere. And you stayed. Look, this isn’t poetic, hell it isn’t even pretty, but I’m scared of how much lower I can get than romanticizing butterfly remains. iv. You’re still the most beautiful thing I never got to put my hands on and I’m waiting for the day that stops being true. v. I’m having to watch everything beautiful kill itself. Because it’s not watching where it’s going. Because it’s going too fast. Because we couldn’t see straight with all those lights glaring back at us. vi. I only agreed to walk the tightrope because you were supposed to be waiting at the other end. This was supposed to be holy ground. Why is it giving out underneath my feet? vii. Do you ever say my name by mistake?  viii. Truth or dare: Did we ever even have a chance? ix. The butterflies are dying. You wanted to be dead. I’ll be lucky to survive the winter.  x. I’m watching everything beautiful die out. My hands are feeling more and more useless these days.  xi. I loved you. Still do. That’s beautiful, but it’ll be gone soon too.

The person you’re meant to be with will never have to be chased, begged or given an ultimatum.