I wish I didn’t look for you.
For those intense but soft eyes, sometimes brown but sometimes the most earth shattering green. Glancing down the hall like a tether is pulling me towards you but knowing that it was severed many moons ago; praying to god that maybe you still want me and that this has been a horrible nightmare I have to wake up from.
But this is forever and I never thought you’d do it. Never thought that arms that held me together could so easily rip me apart. Never imagined that this familiar heartbreak could intensify to this capacity.
But, I have imagined the way “daddy” would fall from our children’s lips and warmed at the thought of growing old. My pillow is filled with the tears of yesteryear, dribbled with promises of endless road trips and hushed giggles in the sheets. I think about how you looked at me, how unfamiliar my name sounded from your lips because I had only ever heard endearing nicknames and the sounds of my own laughter tinkling through.
I wish I could forget you. And yet, I do not. I am afraid that you are my greatest love, and I genuinely mean that. As I look back at the countless failed relationships etched in marble I realize none have shattered me in this way. Because you made me feel beautiful.
You treated me like sunsets and held me like a summer rain. I didn’t need to write, I had no desire to write because looking at you was confirmation that I was alive. And here I am, half-dead but trying to resuscitate myself whilst being stabbed at the very sight of you. I cannot bring myself to say your name without tears pricking my eyes and a warble in my voice giving it all away.
And I am so scared I will be like this for a long time. I want to live, I want to choose life, but I am stuck in this horrendous cycle of mourning and loss. Because I have lost myself in the human knot that was us. You have walked away with some semblance of yourself but I cringe at the very thought of looking at my reflection.
And it’s not fair. I wish life were fair. I wish you never left. I wish you never broke me and acted like I would be fine. I am not fine. I am bruised, beaten, and struggling to breathe at every moment. I wish heartbreak was just a sad movie plot and I wish I never felt anything at all.
But I wish these memories of you would stop fading. Because that’s all I have left. That’s all you left for me.
And I wish you’d come back.