some nights, i'm still sad.
this is inevitable.
i keep feeling around for broken bones; everything is in the right place, and i ask myself why something still aches.
the answer is there.
it has always been there, between my tongue and the back of my teeth; between my eyes and all of the things that i see.
and sometimes i understood that this was going to happen.
and it hurt.
and i cried.
and i held you close.
because i knew something that you refused to know, until now.
you never listened to me: i never mattered. i was an idea.
the first ones always are.
i almost wish sometimes that i could have taught you that, and in a way, maybe i did. but i thought we were one person.
sometimes i look in the mirror and i am surprised by how obvious it is that something is missing.
especially in photographs, it is as if some part of me does not show up where it used to.
sometimes i think it must be faith that is gone. other times hope.
other times neither. or maybe both. maybe something more?
i check for broken bones, but everything is where it should be.
sometimes i am amazed. sometimes, i am defeated.
i curl up because i still feel like i am too small for any of the things around me.
loss is a bullet that just missed the vital organs, and you did not love me, though certainly you thought you did; you do not know what love is.
you did not know at all what you were saying. love is not something that you can stop feeling.
love is not something that you can forget.
