No more I love you's...

a letter...

I think of you...
and there's no more I love you's.
I think of us...
Of who we were and how we loved...
and still no more I love you's.

Even now my face burns with the onset of tears that I fight to keep behind veiled glossy eyes.

My heart is a patchwork blanket of battered love affairs, plastered and stuck together to keep it from falling apart.

This biggest patch is yours...I've covered it in flowers, like a child's bandaid...

They cheer me up every time it leaks and I have to fight to contain its decompressing hiss...

Watching as it deflates and I have to take the time and find the strength to pump it up again.

But I do it...it's tough and sometimes it takes days...but it beats again.

Stronger than before.

I can no longer feel your lingering touch or your soft tender kiss. They are ghosts lost in the ether...

If I try hard enough I can still see your eyes; that look of adoration you bestowed upon me when we first met.

I've seen that look before though since...and I have found that lingering touch and even softer kiss in the arms of others...

It is bittersweet...knowing that more than one person can adore you to the point of infatuation...to the point of loving you so deeply.

So how do I love them back... Well it's quite simple you see.
I must let you go...I must forgive you...and me.

We were just wrong I guess. Bewildered souls in love with the idea of loving and being loved. We changed.

That's ok...we are human and we make mistakes.

I do not and cannot hate you. You were too special to me. You changed my life.

So I'm letting you go. I'm freeing myself of you for once and for all. Of any hope that we could have ever been perfect, that you were my ONE!

In doing so I release myself of all of this grief, of all of this critical chastisement and self berating to which I have become so accustomed. This feeling that I failed myself...you and us.

If you were truly my one, then I have nothing left to live for... because I lost you and there is no hope of it ever being that good again.

That just sucks! and I can't believe it!

So I'm giving my heart it's permanent patch! A final healing. I'm not saying it will be perfect and that I won't think of you...but I'm finally ready now.

I'm letting myself love in the most beautiful and simple way...I'm loving me...

In so doing I open my heart to all the beauties of loving others and having them love me...if they so choose.

So I beg you...fly like the beautiful butterfly that I saw you as.

Mind your temper and curb your tongue. Love your family, and your friends...

But most importantly love yourself and know that through me letting all of this go this is my final I love you.

Who knew that through all of this heartache and loss that you would still become my greatest muse...

No more I love you's...from now on only I love me's.