Sometimes I miss you
I’ll write this poem in the style
of your choosing because
I know you are familiar with it,
the way the words spill out
and the lines break like they’re
supposed to break that way
I guess it’s just always open letter
and you get so many open letters
these days.
from these girls you want to hold your heart
and i remember being one of them
it’s odd, being here without you
i guess a piece of me
always expected you
to be the first person to make me spend
an extended period of time here
but then, that part of me was incorrect
inconcievably incorrect
and so here i am with some new boy
who always meant more than you
in the back of my mind, he was always
who i was waiting for.
i wanted him to say the words
and make me feel like if i was with him
then i would just be his whole world
and now i am that, and i find it fulfilling
but you, well, this poem was meant
to convince you to be my friend again
and i realize that i’m doing a shitty job
practically talking myself out of the whole idea
so i’ll just put it mildly.
here’s the deal:
i’m often caught between my feelings for you
and my feelings for you then
sometimes i think i loved you
and that love was never reciprocated
sometimes i think love was just a word
a word that sounded like the starting gun
for some long, long footrace
but then, we never said it
until the finish line.
so what is love,
in the context of you and i?
we both fucked it up so well
and then the truth is that i fucking miss you
but i don’t miss fucking you
and if i had it to go back and redo
the night i asked you
“do you want it to happen again?”
i’d take it back and say
“so that night was fun,
let’s just be friends”
and maybe then you’d say okay.
it turns out i hate the alternative.
i want few things more
than i want you to call
and ask me how i am
and pretend that we never loved each other
to say hello
like there was never an iloveyou
at the end of the line.
i want to erase those moments:
that time on the bus when you said i love you unprompted
that time in yr bed when you confessed to yr infidelities
that time in yr room when i decided to stay despite thinking i should pack up and go.
i’m sorry.
i know you as well as i know me
when it comes to the fucked up
things we do to each other
and when it comes right down to it
i think we were better off as friends.
and i think i love you.
but in the worst way.
i love you in the past tense now.