I will not, for one moment, wonder what you would say if I showed up unannounced with my slouchy sweater on, with sleep in my eyes and the freeway in my hair. I won't wonder what the protocol is for people who love each other but cannot love each other. I won't think of the order of your life, or the convenience of your love, or the way it feels like a warm bath to you, and a knife in the back to me.

I won't waste another second imagining your tousled hair in the morning or the way your skin always feels suffused with this heat... like no matter how cold it's been you've been laying under a blood red sun all day long.

I won't think for another moment about the goodbyes we said or the way you embraced me after speaking words I had deemed unspeakable. I won't let myself drown in what you didn't say: ("I don't love you"; "this is over"; "I don't care".)

from now on I will forget the way your yielding lips felt when you leaned across and pressed them, blatant and irreverent, to mine. I will not wonder why, nor will I gorge myself on a buffet of things I never said or things I wanted to say or things I wanted you to say.

you, my love, have said them all while I have ignored the signs; while you, my love, have stood the test of time.

while you were walking down a straight and narrow path and avoiding the branches when you could and tending the scratches along your arms and your legs and your face when you could not I have been in a dream. the kind of dream where nothing is real and the faces of the people you love are obscured and you cry and you cry and you cry out for them and when they answer you, you do not know their voices.

I have been the darkness and you have been my light in the darkness.

I have been your wanderer and you my patron saint.

I have lied in every word and you have heard the truth right through the words. right through the attempts to pretend I have cared less... right through me.