WATERING ROSES, poetry

the ghost that follows you (it's me)

i follow you.

i watch soundlessly as you go through your daily motions. i sit on the steps...the very same steps we once walked up, laughing and joking and careless, and i watch as you work. i could be elsewhere, but i watch you instead, for my soul feels tied to your body, to your broken heart.

i see the grief etched in your eyes, like pools of deep, dark blue sadness. grief that has been prominent since that dreadful day. i miss you. and not just you, for i watch you every hour, every painful minute. no, i miss the old you. happy you, cheerful you, stubborn you. there is a hardness in your eyes now, and i desperately want it to fade, but it never does, never has. although i know my life would have been of little worth without you, i find myself wishing you had never met me. i wish i had not brought you this pain, because i cannot bear watching you, figuratively crumpling under the weight of what you have endured. and yet here i am, bound to you in ways only the gods could start to explain.

there are some nights that you curl up in a ball and shake with silent sobs, crying for the destiny you could not prevent. on those days i want nothing more than to hug you, to prevent the hurt i am responsible for. there is times where you drink your misery away, shutting yourself away from the world to wallow alone, sadness etching deep lines as if made by an iron quill. i shout at you to stop, please stop, i'm not worth this, not worth you hurting yourself, stop, please.

if you can, i hope you will forgive me for leaving you, for if i had a choice i would never have. i can see it now, i can see how you loved me, loved me in such indescribable amounts that the prophets will long sing the melody of our story, our tragedy.

i hope there is a better way, a better world, somewhere. a world where i never left you, and a world where you are happy. a world where your sorrow is not because of me.

and i hope in that world you would have known that i loved you too.