you left me one too many times and it has broken my heart
now you have taken me back and I am here
like a paper doll
thin and dry, unable to support weight
needing your hand to move, to feel
needing your voice to speak
you return to your solitary routine and I sit
wondering why you feel gone when I see you
so clearly like a ghost I cannot touch
gliding just beyond my reach and turning to dust
under my hands like a butterfly
each time I touch you it takes away some of what makes you fly
we tiptoe around on a glass floor
smiling surreptitiously at each other in sideways glances
waiting for the next mouse to cross my elephant’s path
then I drop my outsized mallet like the ponderous foot of a pachyderm
we lock eyes as the floor shatters, our world crumbles
our little home
so fragile, so delicately balanced above its precipice of fear, of loneliness
I know you don’t need me, you’ve said so yourself
you might want me, you are still deciding that, you decide
and then change your mind
deciding to decide again and never telling me
my neck is on the block
heart aches like an arrow lodged in my back
I can feel it when you leave me
even when your words say otherwise
that space around you, the one I wanted to enter into
it’s pretty cold when you take that away baby
it’s getting on winter
my bones don’t warm back up like they used to…
the cold just sinks right into my soul
we’ve been left so many times now maybe we forget how to come back
I see you out there in the hallway, I hear your voice
outside the door of our love, you are still waiting there
I hear you laughing in some far off room
you are not gone, it’s true, but you are not mine
and my heart
my heart aches
What’s it like to feel secure in a relationship? To know, to really be sure. I wonder what that’s like…to know there’s no end and you can’t just walk away if it hurts or it starts to get more difficult than it seems worth.
What is it like to be real? I imagine I’d like to know. One day. You in your funny hat bending over something in the garden, muttering to yourself. Me in my boots, snapping shots when you’re not looking. Forgetting where we put the keys, and then when we find them trying to recall where we wanted to go in the first place. Our little lives so entwined together we could never leave because I am you and you love yourself too much to even consider such things.
Like that. Please.
Sometimes it seems like it’s simple and easy, but the truth is that feeling secure in any relationship means feeling secure with being alone too. Once you know that kind of love, the rest will come to you. Even then, it takes patience and time and work, but it’s something tangible, yet not tangible, that you can count on. And they can count on you too. I think you’re already there. Just look around and memorize that place and it will always be with you, because you will always be with you.
That’s cool, I like that. It’s true. I am there. Sometimes I just can’t see where I am. But it is inside me, I feel that. Most of the time :D