Spectator to Soldier

 

 We first met our second year of high school.

Me the new kid, alone in a foreign war zone with no training and no idea how to navigate a battle field.

and you, my guide.

When I saw you for the first time, I saw a cherry tree with bark made of steel, and petals of pink glass. 

you were fragile, beautiful, yet strong.

Our relationship was innocent, with careless happiness and young love, like young flowers at the start of spring just beginning to bloom. 

Innocence like when I walked to your locker with sweaty palms, and loaded with some stupid story I mustered up enough courage to ask for your phone number, when you smiled and gave it to me, my heart grew wings and fluttered inside my chest.

Love like on my birthday I found in my locker a brown paper bag, the edges pushing in from the mystery with which I looked upon it, on inspection I found it filled with my favorite candy, milkyway’s, and a mix Cd.

I don’t know if I ever told you this but that night  my room became the universe and I watched our milky-way form into a heart. the only thing I heard was the sweet explosion of music in my ears, I was a cryptologist cracking the rosetta stone, each lyric a message you had sent for me to decipher.

every time the guitarist plucked a chord, you strummed one in my heart.

You were an angel heaven sent,

What we had was innocent.

Though you never would call it love.

I was like a three year old in a candy store, surrounded by delicious delicacies, who only wants the one wrapped in silk.

The exciting bright colors, and the anticipation of the expectant joy dolled out by that one piece made me marvel.

But I was soon to find this was no chocolate factory, but a store selling pesticide, and my flowers were about to wilt.

When I first told you I made myself bleed every night,

like blood letting to try and cure this disease.

You told me you used to do the same, 

We soon began wallowing in the dark pit of depression together, each orbiting one another while our gravity pulled us downwards spinning out of control faster, and faster, and faster

Until I reached the jagged rocks that lay at the bottom, but you didn’t.

You see, I remember when we sat alone at the lunch table, one of those afternoons where the air felt heavy, and the suns rays felt like old street lights, dim from the task of setting fire to the world.

I think I told you when I tried to feel something again the night before I used a lighter too.

I know when the rain slid down you face, it was the same rain that slid down a cars window as the passerby craned their neck to see the blue car flipped over in a ditch.

But I chose not to notice this.

When I heard that you had told your friends I was your bitch,

I asked you about it, I chose to trust the lie that spilled from your lips.

I had crossed far into enemy territory thinking we were going through this war together

but when I felt something missing I looked to where I thought you stood, and all I saw was empty space, betrayal, and a whole in my chest where my heart should have been.

you thief!

it was then that I accepted that beneath your wrapper only lay lies, you had chosen to follow me only as a spectator, and twist your words saying you were fighting too

just so you could document my destruction.

and when I sat on that bathroom floor with 52 pills brewing a deadly potion in my stomach, I called out to you but you lied once more, playing deaf, cupping your hand around you ear ignoring my screams you stood far off mouthing “I can’t hear you!”

It was then that I vowed to no longer listen to your lies

I had had enough I would no longer be your fool!

So somehow still alive, the next day, I decided it was time I retreat.

I was brought back to base camp to get better training

and I was gone for three months,

and what I learned was that you would no longer be wearing the same soldier’s uniform as mine.

The first time you saw me after I came back  you had the audacity to smile with excitement, and act like you were speechless

when I just stared at you and walked off, I understand why you thought it was out of hatred

but my heart was wrenching out of my chest trying to explode through my sternum and reach you I did not want this, it was easier to believe you loved me

 but I could never trust a traitor with my heart again.

so I made sure we grew apart.

 Every time you looked at me I looked the other way, you were a glass pane 

because I only ever looked straight through you,

every time you screamed at me saying you had given everything for me I cupped my hand around my ear and whispered what did you say?

don’t get me wrong, I loved you like a recovering alcoholic loves jack, but if I sipped from the bottle neck of you lies one more time, I would surely die 

because I could never trust a traitor with my heart, again.

So from then on I watched you from afar as you spiraled closer to those jagged rocks I was all to familiar with, you asked for a knife after that night that you tore your heart out of your chest and held it in front of me, but I just stared through your glass and walked away.

It was like watching a bullet slowly inch closer and closer to you every day,

I knew at some point if you didn’t move it would shatter the glass that was your soul,

but I did not jump in front of it this time, 

I had learned 

I could never trust a traitor with my heart, again.

The last time I saw you, you stood amidst the battlefield

 no longer a spectator as you took on heavy fire, 

but for me? I stepped onto a cargo plane headed home with a rock in my chest where my heart should have been.

-TheSoundofRain

This poem is about: 
Me
Our world

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