he left today.
an amicable parting.
but this one filled with less sweetness. more sorrow.
headed west, he said,
to escape the ghost of my memories,
the sounds of it's shackles clinking,
the white noise behind everything else
clattering around in his mind.
I couldn't hold him here,
that would be evil
and injust considering...
the light in the morning is clear
a good day to start fresh.
I think.
but the first points of permutation
haven't yet peeked through
from behind their cloud,
and the warmth has yet to spread,
to fill the space that he's left
where, for months, all the cold has been held.
I was shivering, standing infront of the stove.
cooking the last meal
I ever would for him.
wiping tears in the crook of my elbow
that didn't have the onion excuse.
finding out the amount is infinite
to the tears that one can shed
over love in all its forms.
as ours had transmuted,
from friend to lover and back again
until we could no longer face each other
without the doubt put in by remembering
all those shades and phases of grey.
so how can I be expected to so easily say goodbye
remembering the gradient of our romance
and our friendship
a decade of being on a sliding scale
where love is never black or white.
I can never be in love or out of love
just somewhere in between
but that middle ground isn't good enough
and still I know that I can't hold him here
when he's feeling like he has to leave.
my parting gift is the excess of my love
folded into the pancake batter
that which he never felt as much as I had tried to show
my secret ingredient,
to make up for my failures
is bittersweet.
a third of my life, of his,
needs the memory wiped away.
the sad hope is that one day
we'll meet again.
as strangers.
with a vague recollection of heartache
and loss
and a greater sense of the fact that
while people are imperfect
love itself is not.
