We Were Only Destined To Be Ashes

Some days I forget. You. Me. Us. The us that never was. Our weaving in and out of each other’s lives. The decade I pretended all you were was a friend.

Then there’s days I put on an old pair of unwashed skinny jeans and find you tucked in at the bottom of my back pocket. Other times I know exactly where your memories and the fantasies we made up are, and I take them out from beneath the bed on days I don’t feel anything and breathe back life into them (trying to breathe back life into myself.)

Sometimes when I do indifference grabs my hand and I don’t know if it’s towards you or if it’s my depression. Other times it does bring back sensation and wrings out the numbness dripping over my entire soul and body. Sometimes it makes me write little things on paper like:

“maybe it’s not that
we weren’t supposed to
love each other,
maybe it’s just that
we were supposed to
love this way
-love in silence,
love apart,
in distance
and in flames.
maybe you and I
were made for ashes.”

Sometimes I think I could hate you. Sometimes I do hate you. Sometimes I feel repulsed thinking about all the things I did I’d never do because they were for you.

Sometimes I despise even myself for ripping off all my clothes, handing you a jug of gasoline to drench over my barren body and for letting you kiss me with matchstick lips each time you had to leave.

I know you always said “I love you” like a promise you couldn’t keep. But I wished what you felt would have been worth the risk. I wished whatever love was there was worth burning cities to the ground. Call me selfish, but back then I wished our happiness would have been worth someone else’s pain, someone else’s anger. For you I would have left a thousand hims.

I always felt like your atoms and mine were maybe spawned from the same star. Souls bound by a cosmic chord strumming a melody only we could hear between us. Inexplicable moments when I could feel your grip on me, through the countless space and the cruel wind separating our lips. I always thought it must mean something. This feeling. The fact you told me you believed in fate – our fate. But the truth is that the moments I’ve felt you most you’ve had your hand intertwined in another’s, and though I’m thinking of you today, feeling you again, it doesn’t mean a thing.

We weren’t from the same star. We were two different ones that came too close, and it was just all too much. We were too black holes colliding. Neither one of us would have made it out alive but only you and I will ever know what it looked like on the inside.

I can’t have you in my life, because anytime I’ve fallen out of love with you and see you walk into a room, hear your voice, you call me love and I’m back to filling up the gas jug. I’ve said it before. I don’t want to burn. Not for you. Not anymore. Next time I think I’ll keep you in my back pocket until you burn a hole. Until the debris spills. After all, all we ever were destined to be was ashes.