If it’s true that souls mirror each other,
does that mean you also lay in bed
picturing my face, trying to remember
the feel of me in the palm of your hand,
the softness of my lips and intensity
of my eyes when we used to lay together?
Am I thinking of you so much because
I occupy your mind too? Or does my constant
reminiscence of you ever make me pop into
your mind – however briefly – like a prairie
dog afraid to come out of its burrow?
Do you have a rifle trained on it, waiting
to annihilate every memory as it surfaces?
I don’t know why I keep circling back to you,
looking for the warmth of the sun but
emerging again and again into the
endless chill of the void that has become
what I remember of your love.
How am I meant to bear missing someone I will
never speak to again? Is this one of life’s
questions that only the one asking can
answer? Like what is my purpose or where do I
belong? I understand what Sylvia Plath meant
when she wrote, I must get back my soul from
you; I am killing my flesh without it. I think I ate
my heart after I left you. I have struggled to
regurgitate it, ready to try again, but who
would want to take it from me now? I worry this
love inside of me will sour like stagnant water. I
feel so childish, crying out for something good
to happen, for a love like a warm blanket.
There is a young girl inside of me wanting to be
coddled and a woman yearning to be handled.
Your smile, your laugh, your hands, your lips
soothed me… so long ago. I have tried to find it
in another. I have tried to manage with only my
memories. But I am worried nothing else will
ever be enough.
– journal entry from just another
passionate, fragmentary girl
To reach out or not. I ponder day and night like Hamlet
over you. Whether it is nobler to attempt one final time to
assert my existence into your mind or fade finally into the
oblivion of your past. I chant again and again, I do not
chase, I attract. Yet I continue to follow the threads of my
memories of you wishing I could mend the frayed end. But
why? Why this strong magnetic pull towards you when all
you did was hold me at arms length or push me away?
Why this constant ache of feeling like I am apart from
where I belong when you always kept me in the shadows?
I’m tired of being kept like a secret, just keep me as I am
without breaking off the pieces that don’t fit your odd
corners – we can have outliers. I don’t need us to be a
puzzle, we can be a Venn diagram. I’m not expecting love
to heal or change me or anyone else. I just want to
experience it. I know it exists because I feel it every day
inside of me. I want to share it.
Did your eyes truly plead
for me to stay or have I
re-drawn you softer
in my memories,
leading me to miss
a figment of my imagination?
Because my soul aches
when I remember your
resigned gaze as you
looked at me as if I were
already only an echo.
When I think of you
submitting to isolation
I feel fingers dig into
the core of my heart
and tear it in half.
If you were to say
you needed me,
wings would sprout
from my back so I could
soar to your side.
I would not leave so easily
a second time.
I want to tell you I miss you,
but that’s not enough;
I want to tell you my soul
feels lost in the past with you,
but that’s too much;
I want to tell you…
but I’ve lived silently
all my life, taking sadness
and loneliness and tragedies
and anxieties stoically;
I do not complain, I do not beg,
I do not ask for what I do not
believe will be given;
But I want to tell you…
if only you would listen.
I hate that I still want you. I hate that my
heart clenches every time I pass your
neighborhood. I hate that you aren’t here for
me right now. I hate that I have nobody so I
crave you constantly. I hate that I’m too
scared to move on. I hate that I let myself
believe it could have ever been any different
than it’s always been. I hate that you were
right when you said neither of us are good at
this. And I hate that I still want to try,
regardless of the inevitable failure.
For All Story Lovers! 