Every Once In A While, I Break My Own Heart To Let The Memory Of You Wash Over Me For Just A Few Moments.

I remembered the other day I was given an opportunity to return to the town we met. Your town. I didn’t take it … but I wonder if I would’ve run into you. Fate being the cruel mistress she is sending us back towards one another. You’re a ghost to me now, so faded in the distance yet the memories send cold shivers down my spine. You haunt me, creeping back in right when I forget to remember you. I wonder what look you’d have on your face if you saw me. would you leave like I did? Would you say something after all this time? Would you pretend you didn’t know me ? Like we were nothing? I don’t think I could take it if you did. So I didn’t go. I’ve avoided it if I’m being honest, I don’t know what it would feel like to be back in a town I once called home. It’s a ghost town to me, memories of you walking the streets. In baseball fields and football games. Somehow you even stole the sunset. How can something so long forgotten by one still have such a strong hold on the other after all these years ?

I forget what it was like to be in love with your best friend until my mind betrays me with a memory of you …

The words don't come easy anymore.

Peter Pan once told me "never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting"

The more time that passes the more it feels like our sentences really ended with goodbye.

I always thought that we were chapters of the same book. But I'm starting to think I'm a fantasy while you find your home in nonfiction.

The amount of time apart is creeping slowly up to the amount of time spent together, and it terrifies me.

Pretty soon I'll be the lost boy you forgot you tucked into bed.

We were once a collectors wine, now we’re a bottle for $4.99 on sale for half price.

“We've had problems that we grow through”

I can still see his face as if he was standing here in front of me. The happiness, the sadness, the look that he had when he realized that he always wanted me wrapped in his sweatshirt. He looked at me like i was the answer to all of life's questions. He held me like i was the only thing he'd save in a house fire. And he loved me like there was nothing else that mattered in the world. And he fuckin terrified me, if i wasn't that important to myself how could i matter that much to someone else? Running away never worked because he was always faster than i was. Staying felt like i was being swallowed whole into the belly of his love. So I stayed balanced with one foot planted in the earth and the other flat on the pavement. I think that my uncertainty caused his to hold me a little less tightly, he didn't hold my gaze as long, and he didn't let me stand on his feet when we danced anymore. And that scared me too. It was just as hard to lose him as it was to let him love me.  “are we destined to burn or are we going to last the night?” I didn't realize that the roots that tangled around my ankle ran so deep. Because when he decided to be the one to run I couldn't break free of my purgatory to chase him. I watching his shadow get swallowed by the distance and the wind blew his foot prints right out of my mind. By the time that some one helped break me free he was half way around the world sending postcards from all the places we talked about. They began with the sadness still in his eyes as he stood alone wishing i could be next to him. But I was too slow to catch him, always one step behind with his scent lingering in the air. Eventually the happiness began to creep back into the corners of his mouth as he wrote that he was doing okay and wished the same for me. His final postcard came and she was smiling and holding the hand that used to be mine. His smile was back and he told me I should come for a visit, so i stopped chasing the ghost that i was following around the world.  “I learned in love and death we don't decide”  I returned home hoping that he would come back to visit, if his arms would ever feel empty without me inside them. But then I got wrapped up in the cigarette smoke and the city lights. I tried to dance with all the broken people i could find. But none of them let me stand on their feet and they always wanted me to take the lead. I didn't see him sneak in the side door as I clumsily took control from another . Once I saw his face I stumbled, and as I hit the ground the roots wrapped back around me as if i had never broken free of them. Two hands reached to help me back up. One that grew the root from a seed and the other that wanted to burn down the whole damn forest. And I lie there stuck wanting to let the roots and vines wrap around my entire body, wanting to give the control back, or to run from both until my lungs collapsed. How do you choose between the hand of the devil and the hand of a demon? 

i can only feel a thing in the summer, there's nothing left come winter.

“Were we ever meant to get it right?”

I’m still mesmerized by your writing, I hope I didn’t take that from you. Do you ever think about me ? I’m sorry it’s selfish to ask.

What a mess we made trying to prove we don't need each other.

I’ve learned now that there is no getting over you. There’s living with your memory or being haunted by it. I’ve let years go by with you stuck to my back like a tumor I couldn’t rid. But that isn’t what you are. You’re a piece of me. A piece that I protected so dearly I lost sight of the reasons I protected it. I’ve learned that every single person I’ve ever loved I’ve written their names on pieces of me to remember forever. I wrote those names down and treated them as if they were punishment. But it isn’t and it never was. I’ve been lucky enough to know what love feels like in so many different ways. I’ve forgiven every heart break except for yours. I’m sorry I’m still working on it, but then again you don’t want my forgiveness anymore. You’ve found happiness in such a familiar place it actually took the breath out of my lungs when I saw it. I can’t deny that it felt like you punched me in the face, but I left you to find happiness else where, how can I be mad that you did ? You don’t read these words anymore. I don’t blame you for not. But I feel like you’ve always been a safe place to put feelings I don’t quit understand. I’m trying to find the writer you once loved, this time without you. She’s only ever come out for you to see, so I will learn to move on in the same place I fell in love, writing to a ghost that has never been on the same page as me. Because here those feelings can live forever without having to feel like their clawing at my ribs. Here I can release them to be finally free of.