love: shower thoughts

i’ve never met someone like you before,

someone i could look at and think “you were mine and now you’re not.”

i’d never imagine we could be strangers,

back to nothing at all.

(gone, like water down a drain.)

#1

nothing feels real but i can still feel the missing part of you that was lost last night.

#2

i could pick up the phone right now, find your contact, and tell you how i didn’t sleep. i want to tell you everything but it’s over i can’t i really shouldn’t.

#5

i’ve found that my dreams are no longer dreams of you. i’m not sure if i should be happy about that.

#8

time moves so slow now. it moved so fast when i was with you. i remember wishing for more time.

(an infinity with you.)

#14

it crossed my mind today that maybe i should get rid of the 265 butterflies in the basket labeled: yours. i wonder whether or not you remember me telling you about them or if you’ve just forgotten me entirely. i wonder whether or not it’s worth it to finish making the last 100

…

i think it’s ironic that the butterflies never made it to a year; what used to be us didn’t make it either

#17

i feel like i’m balancing love and hate. i just want it to be over. 

#22

did you know that our anniversary would have been on international wombat day? do you ever think about that? i would wake up in the morning next to you and the first thing i would do is prattle on about wombats. and maybe you would get annoyed, so annoyed that you would kiss me to shut me up. and then ask me if wombats are the only thing i was thinking about. i would tell you that no, no i know that it’s our anniversary and i love you (still). i would tell you that it’s either i talk about wombats all day or i talk about you all day. and maybe by that point you would be too embarrassed and say you wouldn’t mind. and if that was the case, then i would talk about you for the rest of my life. 

(never again.)

#24

i find myself wishing that we were still a thing. because that mean we’re still something instead of nothing.

#26

i hope that maybe in october, you think of the time where we fell in love instead of when you fell out of it. i hope that maybe when you’re lying in bed at night staring at your stucco ceiling, you think of the times where i was beside you watching the spider up there we named jerry or henry or larry. i hope that maybe when you see the color green, you think of me and the times we said we would have a plant room in our house just for me. i hope that maybe when you see a black cat, you think of me and how you always laughed under your breath and told me “hey it’s you!”

(i hope that maybe you remember us.)

… 

(we said forever, don’t you remember?)

#27

i never thought about it until today, how your right wrist is now blank—

bracelet-less.

devoid of the matching kitty bracelets we once had,

and in that sense, i like to think we’re still matching—

love-less.

#33

i still fall asleep thinking of you, thinking a message from you will be there in the morning. i’m so lost and i wish you were here to guide me again.

(i would follow you again if there was a second chance.)

#64

sometimes i’ll see your spotify playing, and i’ll get curious and pull it up on youtube:

“worlds away”

edm.

you said you only really play that when you need some hype.

i want to ask you how you’re feeling.

i want to know that you’re okay but i can’t.

how am i supposed to not miss you with all of this space?

i want to ask why you’re listening to these kinds of songs.

are you hurting just like i am right now?

or am i taking this to my sensitive heart too much?

it’s not all about us anymore, not every song is about us anymore—

how am i supposed to be close to you now?

i want to ask why your spotify is showing now

because it never used to before.

darling, are you cold tonight?

…

(you’re not really mine.)

#82

“you and me, us against the world.” 

#96

i catch myself trying to hate it sometimes: the you in our past. the softness in your eyes when we were together, the gentle touches when we were lying in your bed together on a lazy afternoon. i try to cope this way, to get myself to hate you and all the pain you put my heart through. i never succeed.

(i could never hate any version of you.)

#123

sometimes i think of another world, where we stayed together, where we started and ended together. in that world, we would have been the two percent that fell in love in high school and we would get married. we would have a house and pets—all the cute kitties and the tiny hamsters and the smart rats that you wanted, maybe that silkie chicken that you once mentioned. we would have a space for your little collections of random things, and a space for my collection of plants. in that world, we would have gone to sleep with forehead kisses, and i would be under two layers of blankets and you would be hugging me from outside of that burrito because you never needed to be as warm as me as night—you preferred falling asleep cold. we would have gotten the chance to wake up next to each other. i could go on and on about that world if i wanted.

#143

looking at the photos of us together makes my heart ache. we’ll never share that same warmth with each other again, we’ll never share those embraces that we used to long for—maybe i should delete these photos. but they’re proof that we were real; a moment of our lives.

(a moment in my life that i just don’t want to get rid of still.)

#192

“cruel summer.” i remember when you said that song reminded you of us: juliet and juliet only ever seeing each other through the bars of the garden gate. the june, the july, all those weeks that we spent wanting. we could have had all the summers in the world if we really wanted to—but we didn’t.

…

(do you ever miss that version us even after all of this time?)

#236

i hope you know i still can’t forget you no matter how hard i try. the way your heartbeat felt against my ear, the way your hand felt in mine, the way you always slowed down to walk at my pace, the way you were with me.

#243

it’s been a long time now; we’ve been talking like we used to. it’s so easy to talk to you like nothing has changed. sometimes you stand so close to me and i let you and it’s almost like we both forgot the past happened. i had to remind myself that no, i couldn’t lean into the warmth of your arms again. 

(would you let me?)

#246

i finally deleted the album of you and me, the one i titled your name with purple and blue hearts at the end. i wonder if you deleted the album of me and you way earlier. the thought of that makes me sad, but i think it’s for the best.

#262

when i thought about the future then, i would see you there. when i think about the future now, i don’t really see you in it anymore. i’m kind of okay with that now.

#265

i was staring at my bookshelf today, lost in my own mind. i saw the five little paper plants you gifted me for our first and last valentines day. i thought about you and all the good times. i took them off the shelf and i stuck them in a box—the same box you used to gift them to me. i decided to put all of the things from our relationship in that box: the purple and blue sticky note declaration of your love for me, the paper plants with your little pick up lines written on the four sides, the zodiac chicken keychain that you gave me to remind myself of you, the black kitty bracelet that you gave me to match your white kitty, the drafts of the letters i wrote for you but never sent. i even boxed the 265 butterflies that wouldn’t ever reach you.

“i love you.” 

but it’s over.

and that’s okay.

(water down a drain.)