loving you/missing you

a forever past

it’s been a year and yet my breath trembles. how could it be? how have i made it? time does not pass without you. it’s a year and it’s yesterday all the same, that i held you tenderly—that i loved you still.

tripping, falling headfirst into all these fantasy worlds does not curb the aching horror that is your absence. i have lived, yet it has not happened. i have gone to class, i have written my essays, passed some, failed some. i have done my laundry, fed myself and yet it has not been real life. i feel like i’m still waiting for you. the throbbing guilt that resides in the back of my chest is blinding today, and i am consumed by the error of my ways.

everyone can see—i, sometimes can see, the shitshow of a relationship i had with you but god oh god the ache does not leave. the way i forget every terrible thing we were, do i forget or choose to ignore? i cannot explain it. everyone can see, and i did too. but i come crawling back, always, don’t i?

because “love just is,” you would say.

and love just is, i would agree.

like the sprigs of flowers creeping through the cold frost ridden earth, like spring will always follow the winter, there i stand, at the edge of the plank of my heart, ready to jump into the deep dark abyss that we are. the beautiful darkness that our sorrowful minds create. i believe like a child, like a fool, that we will find our way back to one another for i do not know how to not love you. come what has, and left what has but this foolishness persists, through the bleak winters hoping to see the blooms of spring. only to be disappointed for i will not let myself, for i know the pattern that we fall into time and time again. we have done this dance before, we have seen this film and we know how it ends.

heartbreak.

it ends in the worst kind of heartbreak either of us will ever experience. then tell me why is it that we cannot stop loving each other? what curse is it that keeps us tied together but will not let us be together?

i used to think that we were right person, wrong time. now i know. i believe.

that we are not meant to be saved by each other. that we are not meant to be kept by each other. we are only meant to be remembered—as an ache that never quite fades, as a lesson that we never quite learn. not a future but a forever past, that is the cruelest part of all. for i will carry you with me in every room i enter, see you in every person i try to love after you. you are the quiet comparisons i can never speak aloud, in the memories that arrive without asking. in the people and the places, the songs and the books. i forget you long enough to remember us. and remember that what i remember does not exist.

loving you has always been—something i survive, not keep.