courage, dear heart

i try to forget you.

i try to remember you.

but i cannot.

i have written you letters,

i have sung you songs,

i have penned a thousand poems,

and it is all thanks to you.

and i wish i had not.

i would rather have you than a ghost,

hanging,

swinging in the rafters.

i do not want to replay the emotions,

the grief,

the exhaustion every july seventh

and on random days in between.

i am here and you are not.

i wonder if you would be here,

with me,

at this institute of learning,

like you said you would.

when i hear the words to that song

“this is the last night you will spend alone,”

i wonder if you thought that

when you tied that rope knot.

i wonder if you didn’t think it.

if you did think it,

would you still be gone?

it was the last night you spent alone.

but i wish you could have found another cure

for loneliness.

i wish a thousand wishes.

i write them in the sweat

that burns my eyes when i wake up

from a nightmare

or a memory.

 

you left,

but you made me less alone.

 

now i have one million,

one hundred eleven companions.

i wish i could have made you

feel less alone.

i would have gladly pointed you toward

the remedy.

hell,

i would have gladly been your cure

myself if you would have told me you were sick.

but you did not.

i guess that is why you felt alone.

 

three years feels like three lives,

and i do not think i have learned enough

in a day to make the time add up.

this is my wishing well.

my fingers will always throw in pennies.

every day for the rest of my life,

i will hear the quiet

plink

of another wish that cannot be unwished,

that cannot be granted.

i will always wish.

but i cannot live for wishes forever.

understand that you made your choice,

and i cannot always live

with the consequences of it.

 

every day,

every week,

every year,

i shed another layer

of the callouses around my heart;

i leave another scar to heal

without picking at it;

i stop examining the scars

that will grow fainter

even if they will never disappear.

you made choices for me,

choices i can never undo.

you have helped make me a person

i never thought i would be,

and even though i would trade it all,

the good and the bad,

to have you here again,

i am still grateful.

it feels sick and twisted to say that,

but somehow it is true.

i will keep writing for you for all eternity.

your absence is etched in my scars.

but i am not my scars.

i am not your absence.

i am more whole than i ever

was because i was broken.

i would have told you,

“courage, dear heart.”

but you left,

and i say these words to myself.

so i will write letters to myself,

instead.

those words are for me,

now.

even if those words

and letters

and tears would not always be for you,

anymore,

i promise you this:

they will be yours,

every year,

on the seventh of july.

i will meet you at your grave to remind you

you are not alone.

to remind me

i am not alone.

courage, dear heart.

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