Good People Hold Knives Too

A broken ego tossed down the drain, a humming echo of a past that still resonates, a heart that beats out of habit instead of willfulness. Bandaids on bullet holes that won’t stop bleeding, silence so dreadful, you can hear your right ear ringing. ill-fated love story. if you knew there was to be a car crash in the greatest ride of your life, would you still hop in? I stare at the wreckage of something I once saw as unbreakable. from a place I never thought I'd be standing. I see it differently now. It doesn’t matter because the ship was always meant to sink. Exiled from my dreams. It’s not that we are not good people, but good people hold knives too. Sometimes to protect us, sometimes pressed against the throat of the other. My therapist asked why I didn't realize the worst part. That we were in love. Palpable, sunken, driven, covered. In love. It was all around us. Love wove itself into every breath, every glance, every word we exchanged. Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance? You drove me to the edge but didn’t throw me off. If my heart was on your table, if my longings tied around your chest, if my prayers kept going to a wordless God. WHY. My therapist wants to know why I can’t accept the fact. You loved me once. In your own way. I did as well. But I can’t grasp the idea of it. Then, I’d have to explain why we fell out of it. I have to admit what we once splurged on, we lack now. It faded like the mist. Like everything does at the end. I told you in a poem once, I’m afraid of beautiful things. I fear them because I know they don’t last. everything in its prime has to wither. Winter comes, birds fly south, the most ardent love story ends in a poem abandoned mid-thought, lost before it can be finished. It’s not that I don’t want to write about you, I just don’t have the courage to. How did it end? We raced towards a goal that was non-existent. we fell off the edge of earth. We hugged so tight we deflated the dreams we were supposed to build. We carved apologies but not too deep so they didn’t demand change. Now we carry shallow scars that won't heal. Everything ends. There’s no prose to wrap it all up. Hurricanes dissipate, tornados settle. I am left standing in the eye of it all, unsure of how to uncurl my fists, how to stop waiting for a punch that won’t land, how to stop screaming at the void for something that will never come. Something is crawling out of my gut, a truth I’m not ready to face. Where were the clues? Where do I trace the string back to that first fracture in the glass that held all the promises we made? There’s a piece of the puzzle we created together that’s missing, there’s a rock at the bottom of the ocean heavy with all my secrets, there’s  a wall on your side of town guarding your cowardice. a fortress you never let me breach. I’m, slowly, unlearning, our, dance. Through whispers, screams, howls, sighs, and the sinking feeling that we’re done. There’s a missing piece. I can’t reconnect the wires that make me.