29 hits you in increments

You think it’s a normal year

But it’s not

It burgeons with insecurities

Blossoms ill-inspired adventures

Clings to skin like atrocious sunburns

Your neurological responses speed up

While your metabolic responses slow down

And you wonder how long it’s been

Since the world lost its sense of endless possibilities

Swimming in salty ocean water

Feels like cloaking my skin

In soft cashmere

I stay in the salt all day

Hair tied in a knot

At the top of my head

And I feel luxurious

It’s an armor around me

My skin is tight

In the places where I’m rosey

From the sun

And I fall asleep unshowered

Exhausted by the sun

You know what I think about now

I think about

How a guy who didn’t even like me

A guy who is just genuinely nice

A guy who didn’t want to sleep with me

Complimented me more than you did

Made me feel better about myself than you ever did

I think about how I felt like nothing with you

Like I wasn’t beautiful

Like I wasn’t caring

I think about how I left and cried on the drive home

I think about how ashamed I was with you

I think about how you disrespected my boundaries

I think about how you didn’t see me as a person with feelings

That’s all I think about now when I think about you

How another guy, a guy I’m not even dating

Or thinking about dating

Made you so irrelevant

You’re not even in the running anymore

You lost to another guy,

And that’s sad because I don’t even want to date the other guy

And he’s still better than you

Healing from you

Was important me

Being alone and still with myself

Crying whenever I wanted

Smiling whenever I wanted

Doing whatever I wanted

Not feeling obligated to speak to anyone

It was all important

Because now I see examples of men

I can see a future with

Good men I would try for

And I don’t want to be half healed from you

Because when I pursue those good men

I want to give it my all

Because they’re end game

And you never were

I didn’t want to try for you

But I want to try for them

Because they’ll treat me right

So I want to treat them right

I don’t ever want to think of you again

I don’t want to ever see you again

And I’m getting there

To the healed

To the I don’t care

To the freedom of being ready to start over

Because those good men out there

They’re worth it

And you weren’t

Because you took pieces of me just to break them

And they rebuilt pieces of me

Without even knowing they were rebuilding them

With you I felt ashamed of myself

You were proud of me

For all the things I hated about myself

I wasn’t even a person with you

And you didn’t care or notice

Because I wasn’t anything

And you weren’t anything

We were just nothingness in the same bed

Nothingness that didn’t even want to be in the same bed

And now I get to never see you again

And I am getting to the point

Where that makes me so happy

Most nights

I stare at my ceiling

And the dark blue of my glass paneled windows

Which look like the ocean far away from shore

And I hear the wind blow through the alleyway

Between my apartment and the neighbors next to me

And I think about all the ways

We would never work togwther

All the ways we are so different

But it doesn’t stop me

When morning comes

And the sunlight hits my face

And I wake slowly in a lazy haze

And I know I’ll have a picture of your face to look at

And I replay all the sweet things you’ve ever said to me

All the moments where your vulnerability

Scared me and warmed my heart

And at some point

I stopped being able to think of a future without you in it

If you think of me

I hope you think about the moments

On Sunday mornings

When we woke up together

And stayed in bed

Laying the sunlight that streamed in through your windows

Because that was my favorite part of you

The moments no one else got to have

The moments I felt safe

And I swear, sometimes

In the morning

In my bed thats too large for one person

When the sun raises just right

I swear I can still feel your arms

Wrapped around my body

it’s funny how i dont remember things clearly

how i am still afriad you’ll leave

how i am still wishing you would

how even now you take up so much space

when you’re 3000 miles away

and yet you’re not far enough

because i met you

and i know you

and i wish i didnt

its storming in Kailua

and im drinking coffee in a rocking chair

somewhere in my apartment there’s a gecko

and somewhere in my mind I’m with you

but in my mind you also want to be with me

and that’s just not true

outside the confines of fantasy