I love you the most
Heartbroken doesn’t begin to cover it, but I guess I’ll start there. Sending you three words in a text message doesn’t express everything I have to say, but it will do, because it’s the last stretch of strength I have left to give to you. I stare out of golden windows like they’re concrete walls keeping me trapped in a haunted house that stole my soul to terrify intruders and curiosity-driven passersby.
I whisper to you in the night of my bedroom, hoping the message will somehow find your ears, the ones that never listen to my pleads. I dream about you seven nights of the week, and cry in the following mornings. Your name gets stuck in my throat when I fall apart in the shower, the water going cold, bubbles sliding down my skin to leave me behind as they swirl away in the drain, my pipeline of loving you. Are you okay without me? I’m sure it’s true. Leaving me is always easy for you. I sit at your door, somber and beaten, waiting for you to come home, invite me inside, lay me down, and sing me to sleep. We’re in love with each other, but we don’t talk anymore. I’m in love with you, but you don’t talk to me anymore. You order me medium-rare, but I haven’t been flipped, so I stay stiff, all my value being burned, my tears seeping out of me just to sizzle onto a hot grill. Our ghosts are still dancing around your kitchen in Omaha, pleading ignorant to the case, pretending the music is still playing, swaying into an infinity that will never be our reality. If I could trade places with my waltzing spirit, I’d take her spot in an instant just to twirl with you again and again, even if it’s not the present you, the real you, the true you.
Friday nights scare the life out of my bones because I presume your weekend plans include forgetting about me. Fitting your body into another girl that you pretend is me. Drinking yourself to sleep. Swimming away from the mess you’ve made, my body washed up on the shore, my skin peeling from the sun, my organs shutting down, flesh decaying, rotting, and becoming one with the land, forever remembered as the one that got away. With every sip of whiskey, I hope you remember how it feels to know you struck me, lightning to a tree. Regret will trickle down your throat, burning your chest, choking you to death, exactly the same way it feels for me every day now that you’re gone.
Was there really a wolf, or did you just want me to feel bad for you? I said, “I love you forever.” You are my greatest love, and my biggest fear. You said, “I love you no matter what.” I understand the difference now. I know you’ll find someone else to keep you company when you can’t be alone, and although I wish it was me, I know she won’t come close, and maybe that should be enough, but it poisons every corner of my soul, my entire entity that loves you more than any other could. I’m stuck with the dead bodies of our dreams, our fairy tales, the life you said you’d give me. The house on the hill with the dogs and the kids, and the great view of the sunset. I bury them in crates so broken, the dirt spills through, weighing them down lower into the ground, almost reaching Hell. You’ll become an honorable man to the ones who ignore the devil in your eyes, his hellions that have become my best friends.
Loving you isn’t simple, it is a curse. You claim to love me more because no matter how many times you leave, you always come back. You circle around to never finish what you started. You deem yourself humble in the notion that you can never let me go. Like resisting cake, but eventually eating it, too. I hate to be the one who says it, but I’ve got the upperhand in this game. I am the conqueror of our rule because I have stayed loyal to my post, a guard dog stuck to the front door, an infant attached to a mother’s chest. An untruth has never crossed my tongue. I don’t invite strangers into our house. I wear my heart on my sleeve for you. I clear the path, calm the waters, ditch the storms. You say you love me more. I love you the most because there is nothing malevolent enough that you could do to make me unlove you.