say it's not as it seems

Few things ache more than this, than you choosing a different path.

Few things hurt more than knowing you made another choice.

You’ll find an easier conversation, a more suitable friend, something other than me.

I want you to write back.

I want you to email and say that you’ve been acting like an idiot.

That you know the unreturned texts are a dick move,

that the statements about doing something or other

that never manifested were a bad idea on your part.

That you blowing off anything even remotely serious,

even on a friend level, is not really who you are,

but is instead just a temporary departure from your norm.

Admissions that you got lazy are welcomed.

Acknowledgments that you thought you wanted this something once,

but just aren’t ready for it, are also appreciated.

I shouldn’t care this much about this ‘pebble under the mattress’,

but I do.....

When I get a text I wonder if it’s you,

even just to say something small and meaningless.

They aren’t from you, and they were always meaningless.

When an email pops up in the lower right of my screen,

I hope it’s from you, one of the one-liners that somehow sustained me for all this time.

The ones with the perfect grammar & spelling,

because you’re exactly like me – details, details -

it takes time to type 60 characters correctly....

When I’m tired, this is worse.

It hits me like cold water splashed on a cranky baby and there simply

isn’t time or an available resource to make sense of what’s happened.

The wine probably doesn’t help.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

I want so much for you to come to me,

to be drawn to me, to just be near me,

to be like the way I know it can be.

The way it was before.

The way other couples are,

with their knowing glances and their simple understanding

that their connection is indestructible.

We don’t have that, not like we once did. It’s nowhere close.

We can’t reach it, and it wouldn’t matter if we could,

because you don’t want to.