Pardon me baby, but I don’t mean to cry. Pride aside, I’m putting my heart on the line. I just can’t let you quit us without giving one last fighting try. Gracefully bowing out now is not something I can do, so why lie? Speak to me and tell me that this all will pass. Explain to me that the emptiness you’re feeling is a phase that won’t last. Barely breathing from the thought of our future soon becoming your past.
Tell me, show me you care. Stare thru the watery eyes, all the Mac smeared. Detect something is wrong before our end nears. Can’t fathom the thought of you and I no longer here. That what we built is now simply dust in the air. Please, hold me. Just show me…that you’ll always be there. We can work this out, make it all better, I promise….I swear. Show me with you is where I wanna live. Instead of me auctioning my kindness, looking for the next highest bid. Under the deepest current, you were my source of inhalation. Under the ocean drowning, you were how I elevated. Now the currents too deep, swimming upstream suffocating from waiting. While my hearts bleeding, pumping harder then ever to keep from going into cardiac arrest. You have it locked up; the warden of being heartless; while I’m under direst.
The same lips I used to kiss now speak unfamiliar words. The look in your eyes, so distant, as if love was a fantasy that never occurred. Left me wide open to suffer from the malpractice to my heart. Hasn’t been right for quite some time. Agreed. Pause. Let’s go back. Hit restart. Who am I without you. Thoughts of confusion, self-esteem subdued. This isn’t what “pretty girls” are supposed to go through? Begging for your embrace, the look on your face I can’t take. How did we get to this point. Really, no return, does the answer lie in throwing it all away?
Time of death 6:43pm, it wasn’t a easy decision, but the autopsy showed we need a little separation. It was harder then you think to admit to this confession. Should I stay? Should I leave? Suddenly now I’m second guessing. She asked:
“Baby, why you doing this to me? How can you just turn off our love so abruptly? Come here, feel that, to the same rhythm our hearts beat simultaneously. Please don’t end what I know is truly meant to be.”
“Truth be told, love will always be there, but my heart skips, flying away, it needs to be set free. I’m no good for you in this condition, your sweet tender kisses, I know I’ll be missing. But you don’t think we’ll be miserable if we follow your heart, and mines I don’t listen?”
“My happily ever after is slowly forever ending. Chapters we’ve created are producing shorter memories as we turn the pages, eventually fading. The only place that has ever held residency in my heart, now vacant. I understand your not happy now, but progress I know we could be making.”
“Please babe don’t make this more difficult then it already is. Your acting like we’ll never speak again, like that vacancy can’t be filled with us just being friends. We’ve been off the same page for a while, sheets being blown by the wind. Your still at the table of contents, I see where our story is heading, I’m at the end.”
“Why so cold, you speak as if ‘us’ meant nothing. The story of our love is what kept us going, kept us binded. How can I just be a friend to the one I’m in love with, the same one who said we’d grow old together one day, must you be reminded? My lover, my soulmate, you plus me together, a whole we equal. To think this is the end, I won’t comprehend when I know there’s a better beginning to our sequel.
“I see the tears welling up, the cracking of your voice. While we were once a whole, becoming a fraction, one half each other is just a better choice. I will cherish every memory, every laugh, every time I held you in my arms. The beautiful music we made, the way our bodies wrote their own songs. But this is our final dance, I’ll kiss your hand then say goodbye. The rights to our sequel, with dismay in heart, I’ll have to deny.”
Dead silence erupts, screaming words unsaid. Glimpse of being fed up but the noise is only loud in my head. Fighting to move forward, falling back instead. Now lightning strikes me as thunder calls my name. Atmosphere singing to me, pouring down its rain. Washing the make up off my face, but not away the pain. How did I find myself here, standing barefoot on these cold bathroom tiles. Thinking the tears were gone, or is the mirror telling me lies? Its like I been raped, only realizing its my feelings being agonized, not the power between my thighs. Stripped. I cry. Clipped my wings, can’t fly. Already missing your once gentle replies, but it was our sequel you denied. Is it time for our final goodbyes:
“Reality setting in. My love I’m losing now, it’s all so real. How will I ever deal from the cards you dealt, judging our fate, denying my appeal. Is this really the end, choked up, words lost, oh my God, the anxiety I feel. I love you babe, you know that, I always will. But I guess there’s nothing left to say, the dreaded part is coming I know, still not ready, so nervous. Don’t agree with this, your mind made up. My heart, you no longer have room to service. I wish I could erase all hurt and bring back what we felt so long ago. Oh the pain I feel inside right now, sadly you will never know. So just go. Walk away now, this stranger I can’t look at no more. The moment of truth finally here, this I could have never predicted. House no longer a home. Our love evicted. See you later is temporary, Good bye forever inflicted.”
“Unpause. Fast forward all the way to the end. You can’t always predict the hand dealt, count all the cards you want, sometimes the house has to win. The pain you feel, I can’t experience, I can only imagine. But at the end of the day, we have to part ways, this relationship can no longer happen. Truth is brutal when reality comes to light. Trying to repair a broken bulb is a futile part of life. The solution is to replace the whole thing, as much as that hurts to say. We both need a new start, watching the hands of time we need to make a change. Our love has been interrupted by saying Its Over, time to open a new book, a clean white sheet, writing a new script on a new page. Goodbye.
~Darren Griffin, Philadelphia based Poet