in-between love

I.

of all the boys you have ever fallen in love with, you have only believed two. 

II.

sometimes you stay up into the late of the night, when the moon rests emptily at the edge of your window, and figure out how two people so different could have brought you to your knees. 

III.

sade - no ordinary love

IV. 

you were maybe but five or six when you would listen to that song on repeat, how could such a small person know why it had always felt like so much flesh and tissue? you used to drown in it back then like it was your very own ocean of lovers yet to come and the stories they’d leave behind. 

V.

the first boy they said would always stay, you were inseparable and unwhole things without one another. people said your names like love could be that real, the way they said them together felt that way. you wore his clothes on weekends, and shared odd socks. you kept a suitcase of books and things that mattered in his bedroom by the coffee table. no one needed to ask where you were when you disappeared, they knew you were safe. 

VI. 

the second boy they said would never stay, he was always a distance, the gap between his teeth, the type to fall too quickly in love, he wasn’t really looking at you, he would never come here, you shouldn’t wait, you give too much to willingly, freely, wholeheartedly. you flew 3458 miles to see him with every penny you had left to make love to him for a week in an apartment you’d never see again. the brief of things means i told you so, precaution, next time. 

VII.

the tired in you feels like old re-runs of a tv show no one watches any more, it plays in an empty room you never make it in to, just howling itself into the white of walls slowly turning into the sad grey of a pavement. 

VIII.

they both said the same things they loved about you, their mouths may have looked different when they said it, but they did. 

VIIII.

so when they left the only things you had to keep were the things they didn’t.