Each time I see you, it is easier to say goodbye.
My heart still aches, it always will, but it is no longer a fresh wound.
You walk out my door and become an echo.
You get quieter and quieter, fading fast until you are gone.
I can let you go now.
Charmed
I asked if you put me in a box.
You nodded, your beautiful face turned toward me, you whispered yes.
I asked if you keep my things out or are they put away too?
You know what I’m asking.
You say the bracelet is on my coatrack.
Where will you put it when you move offices?
You smile and say, I suppose it will go in a drawer, I don’t get to keep the coatrack.
That bracelet.
It has become a talisman of sorts. Hanging there giving off my protective powers.
Its delicate gold chain, the links that bind us.
The charms, hanging from it, clinking against each other like us when we’re close.
I tried to take it back when you left.
It belongs to you now. A piece for your private collection.
“Kitty Bracelet, Worn by Her” could be the title.
Priceless and dear to your heart.
I imagine you touch it. Probably out of habit. A small stab to your heart, a quick reminder of love lost. And of me.
Funny how I left it in your office for the day. It had been banging against my keyboard all morning. I took it off at lunch, and the next day it was hanging from a branch on your coatrack.
You keep almost all the parts of me hidden away. You push me to the back of your mind.
But that small golden circle is the amount of space you allow your heart to stay raw and open.
The time it takes you to touch it and see my face in your mind is only a few heartbeats.
You can feel my essence pour out of it.
Our love as an infinite loop.
That last link to me.
Pieces of me you can’t let go of.
Yours to keep.
Hijacked
Our voices are quiet as we trade hellos over the line.
You sound as breathless as I feel.
Hijacked.
That’s what you say. You feel hijacked.
You say you are reeling from the visceral reaction I illicit within you.
My body flushes and my heart beats fast.
I too am hijacked.
A brief mixing of our voices was all it took to knock us from our centers.
I have to put it in my purse and carry it around until I can unpack it in private.
I take it in the shower and let it run down the drain.
It’s easier this time to see it disappear. Mixing with the bubbles of my shampoo the feelings are cleansed from me and flow down the pipes.
Gone.
I’m fine until later.
I close my eyes to sleep and hear the conversation all over again.
I am hijacked.
My heart burns and I dream of you.
Silently
Walking into the Wind, pieces of the old are blowing off me leaving only my core, stripped down and raw.
I surrender.
The quiet steady, beat of my heart, bloody and broken, keeps time as my soul churns.
It happens within.
Growth is silent.
Creation is quiet.
Change is heart work.
Transformation, like the birth of a Star, is striking and beautiful.
Stepping out of the wind, I see with new eyes and allow for grace.
Incomplete
You took some pieces of my heart when you left.
You can keep them. I will learn to live without.
But the wounds you left in my soul will never close.
I am fragmented and deficient.
Though I will move on, my being will forever be incomplete without you.
Blown Apart
“Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees your blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow.”
Paul Simon
I am walking around with this loss.
The window in my heart, curtains pushed aside, everybody can see the raw.
Everybody sees the bloody beating of my broken heart.
I am blown apart.
Simon, Paul (1986) Graceland. Warner Bros.
Unfinished Conversations
The unfinished conversations remain.
Each one, sorted by topic, is in my brain.
Sometimes I take one out to have on my own.
But I end up sad and frustrated.
I put it back. For now, I’ll keep them tucked inside my head.
Maybe, someday they will unravel and fall away.
Unfinished but no longer important.
Two Worlds
You lay inside me and tell me you love me.
My name is said with warmth from your lips.
Your hands, your arms, you reach for me needing comfort and reassurance.
Your dishonesty destroys it all.
Your inability to be truthful with yourself wrecks it all. Your expressions of love are true but lost to your warped reality.
You will never really have the love you need until you live authentically.
One foot in and one foot out of two worlds is a chaotic place to live.
Broken Safety
You ran away, wrecked and scared to the safety of your dysfunction.
You took with you pieces of me and a heart doomed to regret.
You left behind a gutted soul and a broken heart.
Just You
I am the sort of heartbroken that alters the soul.
My chance is gone, our time is up.
All I wanted was you. Just you.
Exactly the way you are.
I didn’t need you. I chose you, I wanted you.
You weren’t the guy I held up to others as proof that we were in love.
That was never important.
The way you looked at me, the way you kissed me, the way you held my hand was proof enough.
You weren’t my social media image, plastered on my page to assure everyone you belong to me.
That was never important.
I didn’t need you to belong to me. I wanted to love you in a way you felt free.
You, just you. Your brilliantly weird mind. Your soul kindness. Your thoughts, your feelings, your essence.
All that makes you, you.
That was what was important.
I never wanted to change you or control you. I didn’t need to make demands upon you or take you away from anything important in your life.
I only wanted to love you, to be with you exactly the way you are.