Time

I wish we'd met later in life
I was a kid and you were you
I wish I'd been older just so I'd know
When you dragged me into your life
Forced yourself into mine
The kind of heartbreak you were going to leave behind

Vacant

These past few weeks
Months, actually
My mind has been vacant

He finally left
And I had all these empty rooms
I had nothing to fill with
And I liked it that way
This peace of mind
I haven't known for a long time

And then, in a moment that was usually
Exhaustion, satisfaction, breathlessness
You crept into my mind

And boy
Let me tell you
All alarms just went off

Time

I will make time for you
To see what you've been up to
Read whatever you post online
Wonder even if it's just for a second
If I should talk to you

But then I refuse to
Make time to be with you
To actually reach out, talk
Go beyond a like or retweet
And that makes all the difference
Doesn't it?

Copycat

Pages torn off notebooks
Backs of receipts
You collect them all
Write poems on them
Words about exes
People we don't know
Emotions I haven't
Ever felt in my life

You write word after word
For whom I don't know
You collect them all
In drawers and boxes

When someone asks you
What have you to show of your life
You have all these poems
Written over the years

But as they read them
As I read them
All I see is
Words belonging to another

For what you have to show
Of your entire life
Is after all
Words copied from another

Relief

After everything had been said and done
And there was nothing else left
To say and do
I turned to look at you
Expecting to see in your eyes
Anger, exhaustion, hate
But all I saw was relief

You were relieved to let me go

Grief

You asked me why I hadn't written anything
And I told you I was grieving
You told me that grief was what
The best poems are born out of

But three years ago
Nearly four
It didn't feel like a time to sit and write
Because the only words I could think of were
She's gone. She's gone. She's gone.

Was I to write about a grave covered in flowers?
Because she didn't have one
And even if she did
It would have been to freshly covered for flowers to have time to grow

Was I to write about the loss I felt?
It had only been, what? 24 hours?
I wasn't even past denial
By then

Was I to write about how everyone felt?
The disbelief? The fear? The unbelievable sadness
That filled us all?
How could I when everything that had happened, every word I heard, every face I saw
When it all felt so unreal?

You told me to use my grief to write
To put all my thoughts to words
To make poetry out of it all
But you forgot to see that
This grief had left me so emptied
I couldn't even think straight

Repeat

Who'd have thought that five years later
I would be once again
Stuck on repeat
With this goddamn song

Five years ago, it felt like something
I'd want to hold on to
And now, it's the one thing
That's keeping me from drowning

Haircut

Until you cut your hair
I didn't realize how sharp your beauty was
Your eyes were slits made on your skin
Your teeth could tear through anything
Your nose was pointed
Just like your chin
And maybe for most people
There was no beauty to be found in your face
But behind that sharpness that put blades to shame
There was something so soft and pure
That made me too afraid to
Reach out and touch you

Shut up

Sometimes
When you talk
When you just never shut up
I want to get a needle and a spool of thread
And sew your lips together
Shut your mouth forever

And sometimes
The only way I get to the end
Of yet another one of your rants
Is imagining in great detail
The needle
The thread
I will use
To sew that damn mouth shut

Thank you

I can't remember what I was doing at the time
I can't even remember what time it was
During the day, I think
But it suddenly hit me that perhaps you had left
My mind
Finally let me free from you
From all those memories of you and I

And if this is it
For us
Then thank you
For this freedom
I so badly have been in need of

Thank you