This is Not a Love Poem

This is Not a Love Poem

Catch you if I can.
Where have all the stars gone?
I’m drowning in regret and fear,
floundering in a sea of lies
that threaten to untangle me.
Even as the pen touches paper,
spilling thoughts across the neat blue lines,
destroying the perfect whiteness of eternity,
there’s still a deep longing.
I’m suffocated by the memories,
long-winded, spanning the years.
Your eyes hold so many secrets
that I just want to break open
and spread to the world.
Your hand touches mine
like fire, endless burning.
I’m aflame.
There’s a memory I hold close,
of the time when you broke my heart,
shattered my dreams
and left me with too many bruises to count.
There were many days
when I wished I were dead,
when I had it all planned out.
I listed all the pros and cons,
all the ways.
Do you know that?
I wrote your name,
deep into my skin,
wondering what death would feel like.
I thought about it a lot,
I played with fire,
knives.
I wondered.
but I never tried,
nothing more than the slight lines that scarred me.
I was afraid of you,
of what we were, are.
I beat myself up over it,
wrote some lousy things about you.
I almost wrote you a song
but I threw it out instead.
I penned a letter, maybe two,
signed it in my loopy scrawl,
Yours truly, Katie.
Then I folded it up,
cut pieces out,
and made a snowflake out of it,
set it on fire,
and watched it flutter out my window on the breeze.
I watched it crumble into ashes in midair,
before I walked away.
And I didn’t let one single tear fall,
Because I wasn’t ready.
I’m never ready.
I’m burning these feelings,
upon a funeral pyre,
and burying them deep within the earth.
I’m ending this tonight.