I Read Somewhere That, "through Pretence You Can Make People Stay, But You Can't Keep Them", And Ever

Maybe I'm in a daze, not completely awake, but if I could be anywhere in the world right now, I'd be there with you...

© Raina Rose.

Monday, you promised you'd come home, the door was left open.

Tuesday, a little late but I thought I could wait.

Wednesday, I went through the laundry to find your clothes, hoping they still smelled like you.

Thursday, tasted a lot like you when I emptied the bottle of bourbon.

Friday, I was sober enough to think again but you were still missing.

Saturday, I got a call asking if I'd written the eulogy.

Sunday, I realized you were never coming home again...

© Raina Rose.

The thing most heartbreaking about it all is falling in love again. It's insanity wanting to repeat the process, taking chances and trying all over again despite the failures and pain, now that, that has to be heartbreaking. To think you've dealt with the worst thrown at you and to crawl back out from under the sheets, with wounds only healing, barely being held by stitches you made half awake in pain, maybe drunk. Why would you want to do it all over again?

To be brave enough to put your heart back out on the line 'cause the last hit and run didn't kill you. Yet. To start a conversation with men who could care less but of course, you manage to convince yourself otherwise in the name of hope these days. To drive yourelf crazy whenever they don't respond or when you get stood up or when you make a comment and that worked before but didn't now and you look stupid for trying. When you do your best to really just be loved but God, they make it so hard.

You get a little more mad each day. Waking up, thinking that the day ahead will hurt less than the day before but we both know that, that statement dissolves away everytime you see him around the corner, creeping into your thoughts and mind with things and words and places that remind you of him. You lose pieces of yourself over time each day and you can barely hold it all together, but you still try anyways.

Then, one day, God gets tired of playing with you so he sends someone your way and just for a bit it seems okay. You don't lose your mind, you start trusting him (because loving wasn't enough) and you tell him things that made you sad, that hurt you, you speak of your demons and pain, not to garner sympathy but in hopes he understands better, in hopes that he will know better. Eventually, you lose track of time and the days drift by and all you do is smile and fill your days with his presence. Slowly, you start falling in love again and when you're completely losing yourself for him, he pulls back without hesitation and now, you're falling, unbound when you should have been held. By the time you realize that you're broken, he's gone, God's laughing and you're back to square one with nothing left but a bleeding mess we call heart, a broken one in fact. Too broken this time around.

So no, the worst always comes after the heartbreak. To be brave enough to try and fail again and maybe there's a beauty in that but it is insanity, really; doing the same things over and over again all while expecting different outcomes. It is heartbreaking. Love is heartbreaking...

© Raina Rose.

Maybe I don't understand, not everything, that'd be a lie. For only you'd comprehend your feelings whole and sometimes even we can't understand what we feel, so to say I completely understand would be a total lie. But I do know, what it feels like to wanna be up, to give up that sleep and be invested in a conversation, to risk being sleepy the next day than to sleep and surrender all that could have been. I've been there, those sleepy days may feel terrible but every moment, every conversation of that night keeps me smiling and lifted through the day. Sometimes, there's even a glimmer of excitement hoping for the same the following night.

© Raina Rose.

I am happy I say, then I say it louder and happily to those around me in hopes that perhaps if I could convince them that I am, then maybe I will be too. I do it often, then I realize that everytime I hear the word happy my heart sinks, at how I'm making myself believe an emotion that I do not truly feel. Just for a brief second, my heart falls into my stomach before coming back up again with a smile. There, happy.

© Raina Rose.

I used to listen to songs when chatting with friends, sometimes the songs are on repeat and then I start associating those songs with them. Everytime the songs come on, I naturally think about them and the conversations we've had. And then one day, he left. I listened to a variety of songs from plenty of my playlists that I started losing my mind when each one came on. I deleted them all, even the ones I've loved as much as him. It was better this way, because when the songs come on and he's not there, I don't know what to do with all the useless tunes, words and melodies that rise within me. What do I do with all the love and songs left inside of me that once used to belong to us?

© Raina Rose.

The Black Mustang

Something familiar caught my eyes across the junction, and how I wish I didn't remember. It’s such an odd thing because you’d think spending time trying to forget it and having done a decent job at not remembering, would amount to your inability to recall a certain past. However, that was very much untrue today.

The shiny black Mustang. There it was, after all these years. I didn’t have to check the license plate to know it was yours, but I knew it was. Maybe I expected it to look a little older, more broken and faded like me, but it looked almost as good as the day you first pulled up into that parking lot, the day I knew you’d be the death of me. One little, visible scratch on the bonnet and you’d spend hours buffing it out. Yes, a little exaggeration there, but maybe those are the little things I missed about you most when you were gone. The way you frowned when you were upset, or the way you kept pushing your glasses back up your nose, the way you wore your watch a little loosely, and the way your hand always found mine to rest upon even while driving.

This could only mean one thing, that you were finally home. And that implied another thing altogether, that I didn’t exist in your thoughts anymore.

I found myself walking closer to the Mustang, and the closer I got, the more I remembered. This wasn’t just a car to us, it was a home on many days we didn’t have a place to go. We’d spend hours camping out with food and movies, sometimes with coffee and books. I remember the way your car always smelled like the pages of a book well-loved and used, the ones with many lines of bends on its spine, the ones with plenty of dog-ear pages that we never quite went back to finish up, and the ones that were always comforting and maybe a little tragic. After all, we remember pain better than happiness.

On good days, we spoke about anything under the sun and found solace in the simplest yet abstract ideas. It felt as though we were unbound, vast yet small, and inadequate in comparison to a world we knew so little about. On bad days, we had songs to fill the deafening silence and drove for miles in search of a destination that never quite came. Words could never fill the void quite the way your music did.

This car was the birthplace of our dreams and in the end, the very death of it too. How I wish I’d taken the usual way back home today. But today, I felt adrift, out of place, and heavy-hearted. I felt strange and I couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but I saw it all staring back at me in the reflection of the very car I loved as much as you. Because its appearance each day meant you were here and that you were gonna take me home, it meant we were gonna laugh till our jaws hurt a little, that we were gonna share a huge cup of coffee and have endless conversations. It meant that you were finally with me and that made each day worth surviving. And its absence left me just as devastated as yours did. I waited many days hoping for the familiar squeal of your tires that never quite came, I kept faith that only faded each day I was alone again.

It felt peaceful remembering you and everything about us, but it shattered me a little more. It felt like the path I was walking on had given way and I fell into the depths of an abyss, traveling in complete darkness and at the mercy of your saving, all over again.

Maybe I wanted to be lost and trapped and hurt and bled. Maybe I’d hoped you’d walk this way right now, in this very instant, and see me standing right next to the thing we once cherished. It could always go south but why did I enjoy this pain you kept bringing down upon me? It was as though I wanted to be wounded, like it didn’t matter even if I was hurt. I wanted to know what you’d choose; to embrace or ignore, to love or let go...

I guess the devil finally came out to play and in that moment I saw my deepest desire; I wanted to see you one more time, even if that encounter was bound to hurt me. Somewhere between remembering and thinking about all these things, my legs started to give way and I had to sit on the curb. Looking a little homeless and a lot broken, I knew I had to go.

As much as I craved your presence, the familiar scent of your cologne and aftershave, the tight embraces after a really long day, the way your lips curled as you whispered my name, the way you were my sanity and I was your reality, was all nothing but a dream now.

I still walk home the other way just to see if your car is still there, some days it’s gone and my heart aches a little and on other days, its presence gives me a strange sense of comfort.

Maybe it’s a twisted game, maybe the car isn’t yours, and maybe one day you’ll be there with it. All I know is that somewhere in the space between the walls of my heart and the empty lots of that parkade, you exist. Your very being fills this place with soul and maybe I need a little bit of that. And that little bit will give me every ounce of strength I need to carry on with life. Maybe one day it’ll all be gone and I will go back to my mundane routine, but I’d never stop looking for you, for us, in a crowd.

Maybe one day it’d hurt a lot less thinking about all this, and maybe one day it’d be just another black Mustang and on that day, I’ll know I made peace with a past I no longer held. Just maybe…

© Raina Rose.

"It was an extremely normal day and I decided to ruin it by walking down his street. The sun was setting and I could see the lights turned on in his room. I sat by the pavement across his house and drifted into another world. I was sad, I felt empty since he left but seeing him every now and then bought back memories that made me smile in pain. How do I not glisten beneath the sun, my very own sunshine. I heard he was alone again, I didn't want a relationship, let alone one with a broken heart. I just needed to steal another glance to paint a picture of love, or what it meant to be loved. My eyes were heavy but little did I know the day had barely begun..."

© Raina Rose.

Summer Breeze

Morning sun blazing through the window panes, curtains that flutter against the summer breeze, butterflies settling on my sunflowers awaiting a dehydrated death as the climate and my forgetfulness; both, deteriorate at the worst possible time.

The faint scent of musky cologne, the brightest streaks of gold in your brown eyes, the ever-growing stubbles of your heart desired moustache and beards of November, your breath warm against my neck, the leather jacket, scuffed denim jeans, classic Vans and the endless songs that run on my stereo are just some of the things I never seem to forget about you.

After all these years, you'd think it'd be easier to wake each day and walk these streets like it was never faulted, like we were never wounded but we marked these places. Every corner I turn, every step I take, every place I go, seems to bring you back afresh in my memories, undead, alive. So, I notice the cracks on the tiles instead, the mundane colours of the bricks, the overwhelming aroma of coffee, and cigarettes, and some other men.

The sky, the way it goes on, never-ending, but somehow different from the day before and will be the day after. Where do the clouds go, how does the sun sustain its own heat, does it get lonely high up there, what does it feel like to fly and why did you leave me here alone? Questions, I never seem to have the answers to. Questions, you loved asking and wondering, your mind, vast like the sky and ocean, never bound by limitations and regulations.

Days have gone by and everything around me has changed, everything except me. I try to explain a love I hold within myself but no, such precious things cannot be put to words. They may ask, but they never could understand. So, I left them thinking I'm clueless and empty, hurt and withdrawn, desperate and wilting but only the world left inside of me knows how I thrive every second of every day when I get your thoughts, the millions of flowers I'll plant thinking of us, the brilliance and words I'll pour onto paper creating illusions for those who'll love our stories, the melody in pain that only I'll understand for years to come and seeing you in every single thing that I do is not a chore but choice. It's serenity.

Summers have gone by and you're not coming back, the ship that set sail for a thing never known to be found - desire, was what had you lost. I understand, this was a journey you had to make, to yield more than you gave, to take what was not yours, to comprehend things left as is, to boost the flames and burn yourself whole. Sometime, not long ago, your soul found its way home and I feel your warmth with every step I take. These steps are heavy but fret not, with the strength of two, I'll make us whole again. So I tried setting sails for a journey I knew led to torments and afflictions, stopped myself half a mile away from paradise, from you. What I needed was something I'll never find. And what I might find, will never be what I need or want. That summer breeze took you whole and I had to let you go...

© Raina Rose.

Sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder, had I been a lot like her and less like me, perhaps you'd have fallen in love with 'me' too...

Sometimes I see her down the hallway and wonder, why you loved someone like her? Was it her hazel brown eyes that glistened amber under the Sun or was it her crystal smile and endlessly long hair?

Sometimes I see you sitting in that bench alone, floating away into another paradise, completely consumed by your thoughts. In those moments, I wonder if it's sadness that I feel when I see you, hurt that I couldn't be there too or love for the man who even in pain would choose silence and serenity over everything else. In those moments, I completely lose myself all over again, falling in love with you.

Perhaps I need not be anything like her, for to love a dream like you, one must be something different altogether...

© Raina Rose.