poetry for the poetic: 5

CXLV

do you remember the night
we sat on my back porch and talked about constellations
and i counted your freckles like stars
and you told me you want to go far far away
and i told you you can't, not without me
and i think you smiled and everything
seemed lovely, but that night was the night
i realized everything was breaking.

it rained the day you left.
pools of sadness welled up on the streets
and i tried not to cry, but that was the day i realized
you were the only one who ever really got me.
or i thought you got me. maybe you were
just the best one at pretending but
everything that came out of your mouth
made me shake in a good way.

or maybe it was in a bad way. maybe loving you
wasn't everything it was supposed to be.
it was such an intense feeling, kind of like
galaxies exploding in my chest or maybe
a supernova: so beautiful but so tragic.

i'm trying to forget every good thing
you ever said to me. i want it all to be red.
i want it all to be ugly. i'm trying to forget
how to love you, how to remember the bad times
instead of the good, how you carved my heart
out of my chest and left me in the wilderness,
how you left me empty.

but when i think of you, i just think of
how your eyelashes look in sunlight,
how your cheeks glisten in the morning air,
how you've gotten me through
some of the hardest times in my life.
when i think of you, i think of sitting in your bedroom
drinking wine out of the bottle
and laughing and laughing and laughing,
laying in bed with you, our legs intertwined
and talking about our dreams
in the pitch black darkness.

and i still feel it, even when
i know i shouldn't. it still eats at me
like i am a parasite and my crooked mind
is higher up on the food chain. i wish
i could turn my brain off sometimes,
the way you do. i wish everything i did
wasn't trying to impress you.

your sweatshirt's still in my bedroom
from months ago and i won't get rid of it
just in case you ever want to come back and get it.
will you ever come back? do you ever
think of me? are things always going
to be the same as the day you left me?
even when it's sunny, i feel the rain clouds coming.

i guess what i'm trying to say is
i'll leave the light on on my back porch.