When I look into your eyes,
I see a dullness that was once love.
I see an emptiness that used to be joy.
I see nothing.
Our fights washed away the light in your eyes,
and every time you yelled at me I saw that light dim.
‘Slowly but surely,’ they say,
but this was not slowly.
Within a week of constant crying and fighting,
you were gone.
So I guess it would be more surely than slowly.
Our love for each other is what brought us apart,
and our happiness in what we do has disappeared because of one another.
Your name traces every scar,
every imperfection I have caused myself,
and even you know that.
You cry for help silently,
but it’s so loud in my ears.
And when the rain washes away all of your screams,
I know that they’re still there,
because when it is sometime around four am,
and we both are thinking of each other with empty eyes and hollow hearts,
neither of us can help the other.
We both know that our cries are present,
but unreachable to one another.
We both know that someday we will have to face each other and talk about what happened,
But what did happen?
You stopped caring?
‘I was trying to keep an eye on you to make sure you were okay,’
You said,
but I know you all too well.
I know that you distancing yourself was not an act of care or love or even friendship,
and after we “made up,”
It’s just not the same.
It’s not what it used to be.
Your eyes are still dull and empty as they used to be,
and somehow the light in them hasn’t relit.
And all I want is that light to be ignited again,
but I’m starting to think that it’s impossible.
When I cry for help,
All I get in return are cliché answers along the lines of,
‘The word ‘impossible’ says ‘I’m possible!”
I scream for you to be yourself and me myself, and when you finally hear those screams,
you’re past the point of being lit again by my cries.
You’re past the point of living.
‘Alive but barely breathing,’ they say,
but you’re breathing just fine.
You are alive,
but only alive.
Not living,
surviving.
Surviving with only your head above water,
Surviving with broken limbs and a dead heart,
Surviving on the mere concepts that we could be ‘normal’ again.
‘Put the past behind you,’ they say,
but I know that this past is doomed to be repeated.
Because well,
isn’t every?
Ours is filled with beauty and hatred,
Love and bitterness,
but mostly happiness.
But oh,
that happiness was lost every time your light was dimmed,
and that happiness was lost every time we got deeper in our sea of despair and hatred.
In that sea,
there are the most unfavorable and repugnant thoughts for one another,
but somehow it balances everything out without us knowing.
Somehow our love connects us in which ways we cannot comprehend,
so we simply don’t.
But it sure is there,
and we know it.
We feel it with our fingertips,
the fingertips that still sting with the electricity we once had,
the fingertips that still sting from our yells and cries,
the yells and cries that brought us apart.
The yells and cries that were once toward each other,
but they have turned into yells and cries for help.
We yell and cry for one another’s mere love for the other,
because through our spite and hostility between us,
There is still love.
{s.r}