past tense

I knew a girl, once. I did not know her well, but she came to know me and therefore, somehow, I felt as though I knew her. She was a lovely sort of aloof in person, and she had a put-me-at-ease smile. I knew her by her words and her connections and not much else, but it meant the world to feel included. I considered myself guilty by association, and it was almost as glorious as I'd imagined. I wanted to follow her through the night until the sky looked like two painters came together to create the clouds in separate styles. 

I knew a girl, once, when the world was falling into rivers. I looked for her, and I've still yet to be able to justify it. I lusted for a piece of her heart, because I knew it was broken and I've always been the one to make beauty of a shattered mirror. I wanted to believe that if I could just make her love me, then both of our lives would be healed. 

I knew a girl, once, and she was as sad I've ever known a person to be. Try as she did to be happy for the ones who surrounded her, the ache within her diffused through her fingertips to mine. She despised the hurt she found in the eyes, so she was the face of comfort and the arms of welcome and the shoulder of solace. I saw within her and I craved it. My depth perception was inaccurate as always, but the things hardest to let go of are the ones that do not make sense. 

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Moving is like dying - 

you go somewhere else,

and stay there,

and maybe sometimes you stop by at your old places

but it's never the same, 

going back. You don't belong. So I'm never sure

whether to use past tense

when I say 

"I love/d him."

or when I say

"I miss/ed him."

Because I do, but he is not mine

to miss, he was never mine 

at all, really. I spent

the majority of my childhood wasted

on him.

I always wonder

about my life

if I had stayed.

Maybe I would've given up hope.

Something last year

stayed my hand and my heart

from doing damage - 

maybe it would've

just

not,

there.

I wasted

everything

on him, there.

But moving is like dying,

so I don't have to 

actually

do it.

He's still there, tucked

in the corners of my heart,

a book

with too many dog-eared pages

and dust in between the binding.

It cracks when I open it, and I run my fingers

over my old thoughts about him.

I wonder

why I even bothered

to keep them.