She made me feel like my favorite song.
Being with her was like sitting on a park bench on the most beautiful day of autumn.
She was a superhero.
She could walk straight through the walls i built between me and this world.
She colored in the spaces that god had decided to leave blank.
She was like the cool side of your pillow.
She effortlessly settled the chaos of my mind
and extinguished its endless desires.
I always needed to be the best,
to be impressive and interesting and funny and talented.
But with her, it was sufficient to exist.
She was warm and soft like a blanket, but her face was defined and radiant.
Her hair was too graceful to fall victim to gravity.
It instead flowed like a waterfall along her spine, dissolving at her hips,
and retreating to be emitted from her crown once again.
She sang like an angel but hid behind her immense wings.
Everyone adores her.
I can hardly blame them.
I felt the dagger cut deeper and harder into our chests.
With every inch it was met with more resistance.
It made my insides scream and my thoughts bleed like a wound that wouldn’t ever scab over.
The world grew crimson as it became bathed in the love I just tarnished.
My hands looked pathetic covered in the blood that they drew.
She hadn’t even seen the knife coming before it entered between her shoulder blades.
She didn’t know me to be a coward.
It took a lifetime to remove the dagger.
Something about the immediacy of its sharpened tip rubbing against my veins
mimicked the intimacy I had just ruined.
I knew that once it was removed, the last of my blood would escape from my heart and run down my body, staining the world red once again.
This time I would be drowning alone.
Just as suddenly as I had pierced her back, I yanked the knife out and our bodies collapsed to the ground.
I envied my blood for at least it had company as it mixed with hers on the floor.
The ground became one of those modern art pieces people make by pouring paint on a canvas.
The red was dull but pretended to be deep.
Eventually my lifeless body crawled to its feet and tried to scoop the soul back into it from off the floor.
I dipped my paintbrush in the blood and found comfort in the flowers I painted with it.
but my efforts proved futile. the rain came and eventually every ounce of anything left in my body rushed out through my eye sockets. the tears they formed washed away the blood and all that was left was my vacant body staring at the carnage that laid before me. the only evidence of what happened was the hole through our chests left by the dagger. and the hole left in my heart that was the shape of her.
The days just blur intoeachother.
Did we break up yesterday or was it last week. Or was it last month.
My hair and fingernails remind me how much time has gone on without me there to experience it.
At first I was fine.
I thought the hardest part would be the beginning. That’s what people said. They told me it gets better with time. Then how come every night my bed feels more empty. Why do my thoughts find less peace and my dreams grow less dreamy. I thought time healed, but it is a sickness.
Maybe the heat that kills the virus is what’s so painful. Maybe the fever of longing and desire I feel is needed to restore my self love. But I just want to take her ibuprofen.
I’ve never felt this alone.
And for some reason,
maybe because I initiated the breakup,
people seem to think I’m doing fine.
It was pain that initiated the breakup, I had no agency in the matter. I had hoped that I would be liberated from that pain after the breakup. Turns out I got to keep it. And now I just have to miss her on top on it all. So no I’m not “fine”. I’m far less fine than I ever was before.
I think part of me thought that last quarter would have prepared me for this. That the way I felt last quarter would be comparable to the way I feel now. I really thought that her choosing that building next to Tressider (it shall not be named) over me would conjure the same feeling as her not even getting to choose me. But back then, no matter how distant I felt, I knew I still had your heart. In the back of my mind, I still had that fact to cherish and hold dear. It was the anchor that held me still during many months of storms.
Sometimes I feel like you don’t care about me anymore. It’s hard for me to believe that you would stop loving me this quickly, but it’s equally hard to believe that you could still care about me without saying it for so long even though I literally told you not to tell me and you’re just doing what I told you to do. It used to hurt less when I knew that you were still hurting.
She is beyond familiar.
Some people I recognize.
Others I don’t.
But no face is etched in my mind like hers.
I haven’t stared at anything nearly as long.
No other face can hug me from an arms distance
Or make me smile from a thousand miles away.
My hands know nothing better than the shape of her hips,
And the texture of her fingertips,
And the softness of her nips.
My tongue knows nothing better than the taste of her lips
And the juice of her gorilla grip.
My ears miss the way you sounded right beside my face.
The crisp yet gentle inflections of your voice.
My nose longs to experience the aura of your hair,
And the rice-maker in your house.
All of my senses are made to perceive you.
I often wonder if what you said to me in quarantine was true.
Was it the regret talking? Or was it really you?
Did you mean it when you said I was the most important person in your life?
Did you mean it when you said I helped you love yourself more?
Did you mean it when you said you would work on loving yourself more too?
Did you mean it when you said you doubted there was someone better for you out there?
Did you mean it when you said my body was so perfect that it hurt to look at me?
Did you mean it when you said imagining me with someone else made you want to throw up?
Did you mean it when you said imagining yourself with someone else made you want to throw up?
Why were we closest when we were falling apart?
Maybe we were falling apart the whole time and the closeness was just honesty.
I thought quarantine would be the worst part of the breakup.
But that was the closest I had ever felt to you.
That was the most overwhelming my love had ever been for you,
The deepest my empathy had ever gone.
The most I had ever craved your touch.
Honesty.
It had always been that simple, but I was too dumb to see it.
We held things back to not rock the boat, but in the end that’s what ended up sinking it.
It’s painful to realize that I’ll probably never know a lot of things that you felt in our relationship.
I just hope what you said to me in quarantine was true.