This is not a poem, it's an entry.

Apr. 20th, 10:29am

I have many things I could write about, about your arms or your hair when freshly trimmed. But those things bring me too much pain, so instead I’ll write about them. I’ll write about the person who’s helped me see my worth, the one who helped me love my body, who’s kept me on this earth. The people who I’ve clung to, the more than just the one. How they always seem to quell the dark though it returns when we are done. There’s this sound on my street, a car that’s deep like a tank, the first time I moved here and heard it my heart immediately sank. And for a long time when it echoed, I would check outside and see if the sound was coming from the one person who I knew, that completely hated me. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice I’m assuming it was some time during the end of last month? When it finally was you, or maybe it didn’t wake me up. Or maybe I was busy, talking to my friends, maybe I was out with my coworkers as these days I often am. Or maybe I was writing my song about how you left me to play in the snow alone and that it still hurts me now. Because it’s not all about the words you say or even the ones you don’t, it’s about the actions that you take to show you don’t want me to go. It’s about holding me tight and close to your chest. It's about saving our money, doing the things that you said you would, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting my breath. You never took me on a date, you seldom held my hand even when I told you I needed those things, it’s like you still don’t understand. Do you really think you would change? Find a way to suddenly fill in the gaps of the pieces of myself that I gave to you, that you quickly threw in the trash. If I really focus and think logically, my mind finally remembers all the times I cried. I cried so much with you. It felt like every other day, and I’m not being dramatic, it was like I was deteriorating, my head was filling with static. I was doubting myself quite literally constantly. How is it that you didn’t see? I was slowly unraveling and falling apart, doubting if you loved me, if you needed me. If I was happy, if I was suffering, if I deserved to suffer. I came to doubt everything I knew about you, about myself, I came to hate my body, my mind, and everything else. I cut my arm and you didn’t care, I was sick and you weren’t there, my soul was aching, why didn’t you see, I couldn’t even give you everything, because I didn’t know if I was me. I stopped being passionate about my music and my life, in the present we had happy moments, but the present doesn’t define life. I tried to be open with you, I shook and sobbed in our bed, and even then you wouldn’t hold me, even then, even then. I didn’t feel loved, I didn’t feel understood, I didn’t feel safe, and I seldom felt good. This was supposed to be about the people, who have made me feel like me again, who love it when I harmonize and dance while I’m in the car with with them. The people who’ve seen me happy, in a way that you never will, because when I was around you, I was never truly that girl.

(published 2021)