i do not want to be your wasted love,
pin pricking buds of burden into your yesterdays.
when you look down at your hands,
should you think of me beneath them,
i would want you to be free of guilt
and know that, above all, i have never doubted your goodness.

it's true that i am sloppier without a partner,
that i find truth in tragic things
and hope in unfamiliar bodies.
i do not want to sleep alone.

i wonder if it is best to carry you with me,
to think of you fondly when someone else's gestures remind me of your own.
i do not know if it is better just to let you fade from me,
to erase your permanence etched like charcoal
into my shadows. it would be easier,
i suppose, to not believe in you anymore.

this is hard, i know.
i find that in my hurt, i forget that you, too
are hurting. i wince to think of your cracking voice
and lonely shudder, curled to the side of the bed and
afraid to look at me.

i suppose that there is comfort in this silence.
without you here i can only think of you.
i do not have to see you to know that i am still a part of you.
i do not have to tear myself to shreds to prove that i am broken.

this is a weighted pain,
that is felt mostly about now, at 2 a.m. and fighting sleep.
when all i can think about is my empty hand
and the negative space where your arm used to be.
but next week i will sleep easier,
next week i will swallow smaller lumps and
when i start to move past from this private death of
our crested fall, i will mourn that too.
because i know that we were good.

just not for each other.

02/06/2010

Posted on 02/06/2010
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