this poem is not for you. 

the sister of my childhood best friend. hair down to her waist, curled like mine. matching braces and the kind of freedom in your eyeliner i didn’t know i’d long for. the one who coaxed me from my empty bed, world stopped like a broken clock. drip-fed me everything i’d always wanted. baby bird with hands that didn’t shake quite so needy, not yet. group of friends who put me in their groupchat and brownie boxes and instagram pool parties. but more than that, the 3am lifeline: songs that would stick like syrup on my neck. seeing light in me i didn’t know was there, yet. the tether on my heart that meant i had a place to exist, hers and mine. 

i know that we never fell in love. i know that she was the only girl to ever break my heart. irrevocable, beautiful like a blood spatter over dusty glass. i went on singing my soliloquy for months, texts like a moonlit moat that could not be crossed. eventually — got the nerve to write something about ash’s soft grey and longing, hit send, and never (only sometimes) look back. 

(she never read any of it. 50, she’d hug me without flinching. 50, she’d pretend we didn’t bare our souls to each other like exposed wire.) 

could i pretend i stopped loving her? no, because her friends grabbed my arms too-tight in busy hallways, pity over their faces like glitter paint. the library was empty when i asked for her new number. windows always open, even the air stilled when they said it wouldn’t be good for me. your instagram says that you went to university after all, that you stayed alive. i’ll always wonder after your footsteps. i know that you’ve already forgotten mine. 

six years on, i’m editing second person pronouns to third. 

and for you, the girl i thought would stay. i tried not to write about you. or that i saw it in your face like poetry — that first day we met, everyone all closed and chatty in a way they’d never be again. the magnetism of your heart so worn with want. i knew we’d find something you could use to make bright and beautiful. i knew how you’d choose. i loved that about you. 

you never made me lose my breath — not with a fondness that spilled over distance, not with choreographed hands — and never yanked it from me in the half second of an inhale. you never just watched as my ligaments tried to knit back together. i was never held and told to beg for your love, but 

why are you so blind? 

we gave up on answers — why you’d stick a knife between plates of armour, and do it again. why you’d make me doubt soft things and my racing heart. the home we had started to feel like the ones i’d run from: the ones with orange peel on their floors, where i’d press my pithy cheek to the slats and feel like a thief of the air. one day, i’ll believe everything i’m dealt isn’t deserved, a measured three-story drop. but already i knew — she loves you. the creeping horror at such a mismatch: why can’t you treat her like you love her, too?

this poem is not for you, just as i am not the leaver. 

i never gave you any breakable pieces of my heart, 

but i wish i didn’t look to the mirror and see your face like a bruise all along my ribs. 

wish you’d open up your heart again

not unlike doors closed in my face

and walk the path with your arms in mine again. we made magic together; know that i’ll never unmake it.