To the man I love,

I remember

staring off into the cotton candy sunset

and thinking to myself “this world is ours.”

Moving through a cosmological horizon

without a clue of what lie in the distance.

My hand had been on the stick shift.

Your hand on mine.

My smile, contagious

Then one morning I woke up…

it was all gone.

Just like that.

You were gone.

The pain comes in waves.

One moment, laughing with my friends,

the next, sobbing in the shower.

It has been hard. So, hard.

Like, unbelievably hard.

The hardest ache I have ever experienced.

Your shoulder,

once the place I rested my head and counted sheep–

now, I find myself wide awake at three A.M.

not knowing, how to sleep on a pillow.

When I gaze up at the sky, all I see

is a vast expansion of sweet nothing.

My hands grasp the wheel– I no longer sit in the passenger seat.

I try to play my music loud, but I can still hear my own thoughts.

Sooner or later I’ll break down.

I always do.

I try to skip rocks, they sink down into the water.

A moment passes, then it’s gone forever.

But what about our plans?

I once believed the world was ours.

As the leaves begin to change colors,

the orange has an entirely new meaning to me.

Maybe, I must change with the cold weather, too.

I don’t cry as much anymore.

I still choke in complete silence.

It is easy to keep myself distracted,

but as soon as I’m alone- I– can’t do it.

I pick up my phone and realize, I have no one to call.

But I smiled today.

Are you proud of me?

It crossed my mind: all of the times, I danced around the living room

like a fool until you lost that apathetic look I detest so much.

You would laugh, then pull me in,

then declare your love for me.

And we were alright. The world was ours.

Is it human nature to glorify the past?

To pretend that we never messed up?

To act like our genocide never happened?

The day I lost you haunts me.

I am still grieving.

My inside catches fire

and spreads like I’m summer brush;

the burning truth flashes before me–

I relive it:

taken back by those words that you spoke to me.

The dire tone of voice put me on my knees.

At that moment you became a complete stranger.

That was when I first developed, this pit in my belly.

I could not believe the man I loved

as he looked me in the eyes,

my gentle blue, now red and puffy,

I recognized the expression the second I saw it–

he had fallen out of love.

I have accepted that the world can still be ours,

but the world will not ours together.

Sincerely,

What was once yours