When I was 16, I found myself in my first real relationship. Less than a month before I turned 18, I found myself completely heartbroken out of nowhere. Looking back on that entire relationship, I wish I had listened to my friend's warnings. It took me months to recover and even now I have moments where that relationship affects me. Thanks to a writing and speech class I somehow ended up in, I found an amazing outlet to finally allow me to distance myself from the last remnants of that relationship. Slam poetry, though a brief pastime, helped me produce the piece I am most proud of.
Dear Past Love
Three words, eight letters: this is what I felt for you.
I saw you today– Am I just seeing things?
You look sad-but maybe I’m confusing sadness for just being tired.
I’m making myself a liar.
I said I wanted my sweatshirt, but I just wanted to see you.
I wonder if you miss me too.
How could I think we’d be the same as we were?
But perhaps it's because your time is not spent with me anymore it's with her.
My head was filled with expectations that weren’t met
But how much can you expect from something as meaningless as getting a sweatshirt back from the thief who stole your heart?
You handed it to me, avoided my eyes and asked
“This is yours right?” As if you have forgotten that you once knew me to every corner of my mind.
Have you forgotten that you were once mine?
But still I tell you yes, past love–and you were once mine too, but that time has gone by.
It has been months.
But the months are not long enough for me to forget the gentle feel of your lips on mine every time we said goodbye.
Three words, eight letters: what happened to them?
When you shut that door in my face the waves of emotions and pain
Collapse into me and drown me in the sea of your lies and every single word that pierced my skin and wounded my heart and mind.
I sit alone trapped in the walls you forced me to put up the day you didn’t show.
I sat in my car, my tears matching the pounding rain that attacked my window
like your words attacked my heart:
“I don’t love you anymore”
Three days led you to those words
But after three months I still can not pull myself out of the water,
the weight of losing you pulling me under.
But still making me wonder if no really meant you could use me to no end.
Is that really why I ignored my friends?
Three words, eight letters: did you ever even mean it?
When others can’t see past the pain you inflicted
I remind myself of all the good times that had me addicted.
But you were a lesson I confused for a soulmate.
And now I know I’ve learned that love must sometimes remain in the past.
And you may have been my first love, but like most, not the last.
Moments spent with you play on repeat in my mind like our song
“Only know you love her when you let her go”
I guess we were doomed from the moment we first said “I love you” during a song about letting go–which I can’t seem to do.
And then I remember the day you ended it all: the agonizing pain that came in catastrophic, crashing waves and has consumed me on nights where even sleep refuses to accept me.
Three words, eight letters: I loved you through hell and back.
My endless nights tormented by the destruction you left: the ruins you created.
A ruin like the ash-covered city destroyed but left for anyone to see what I was fated.
But still I hold on in hopes you change your mind, though mistakes we’ve made and words we’ve said keep you from being mine.
Three words, eight letters: Maybe I don’t understand their meaning.
I thought our love was as vast as the night sky.
Each “I love you” adding a new star to your constellations and lighting up my world.
But each of those stars began to burn out and slowly my night returned to black.
I have to remind myself that I can never go back
Because each star became tainted each night.
So perhaps I’ll always love you
But I will find other ways to light up my sky because
I don’t deserve the pain you brought
And you don’t deserve me.
Three words, eight letters: Go to hell.
