Sleepy Eyes and Bony Knees

Nights like tonight, when I still can't shake or excavate the thoughts of you, I fret about why you're still the last thought of the day before these tired eyes shut.

Sometimes, still the first thought when I wake up.

It’s been 130 days since your world bled into mine, and I still dream about you.

The 15 days between now and the start of a year where you and I never existed is a tightening noose,

And I am trying to cut you loose.

Trying to find some way for reality, my heart, and my mind to call a truce.

But, I tell myself that I can still love you and grow new roots.

Roots that dig and contort, branching out in new directions, forcing pathways in the dark that are new routes in a choice that wasn’t mine to choose.

I am running out of room.

As time goes by, I push down, ignore, and surmise that I can’t change the outcome when a difficult thought tries to steal my mood.

And I am a fool,

For thinking I can escape the hellscape, that is the vacancy you left in your wake where wars are waged, battles are fought and ended with a dual.

Endlessly as the sun rests and the moon rises, the cycle rewinds, repeats, loops.

Maybe I deserve all of it, a consequence for the change I incessantly refused.

Excerpts from a piece I wrote after having a breakup equivalent to a war flashback: How it starts: "I just grabbed your kettle to boil water for the drains in an attempt to fiend off these damn fruit flies, until the wind was knocked out of me. Physically I clicked the lid up, turning the water on, inwardly I got swept up by a windstorm of a new reality, one that’s already been lived: I hear the roar of a waterfall in the distance, as you sit in the tub while it fills, but, the water is running cold. I grab the kettle for your bubble bath and bring it into the bathroom to warm you back up. Watching the way you’d sit up and pull your legs in for me to pour it. The beautiful cords of how “thank you, baby” sounded coming off of your lips and the orchestral hum of satisfaction from deep in your chest reverberating off of the walls,..."

Tuesday, August 24, 2025: 5:48pm

You will forever remain in the softest parts of my heart.

In the favorite spaces of my mind that holds all of our memories.

You will forever have a piece of me; in all honesty, more pieces than you’d probably like.

I will search for you in my dreams so that we keep making new memories.

You are a permanent mark in my life denoting my biggest mistake, my eternal regret.

Though I know it’s for the best.

Maybe we were two wrong people at the right time from the beginning.

Maybe we were two right people in all the wrong times.

Or maybe, we were two right people in the wrong lifetime.

And maybe we’ve done this dance before in a different life.

Maybe we’ll do it again in the next one; and it’s just right and just works.

Because it feels cold in your absence, empty.

I am standing in the hollow spaces that were left behind.

And it’s never felt so overwhelmingly desolate.

I am coming to learn that’s just life without you.

It’s an empty room.

It’s a cold bed.

It’s a home that doesn’t feel like home.

There’s light but no warmth.

There are experiences but no feeling.

There’s just me; sitting with knowing it could have been different.

Me knowing I should have done different.

Knowing I am the reason there’s no more us.

And I will remind myself every day, so that I continue to hurt.