Yesterday

There was a time in my life, recently, when I had lost the only person who mattered to me at all, and I had no direction whatsoever, and all I did was survive. Much art came of this.

It was dark and the day was long gone.
And next to you, I felt a chill, even as you snuggled closer.
Your fingers under my jaw, and you couldn’t see my face in the blackness.
Couldn’t see the tears that threatened.
I could have let you.
I could have gone with you, where we used to go,
To a place where neither of us felt the sparks,
But neither felt alone.
I could have given you what you wanted.
But I couldn’t.
I could have tasted your lips and thought of her,
Closed my eyes and tried to pretend.
I could even have tried to erase her, like a shadow on my memory.
I could have lost myself in the feeling of being loved, wanted, accepted
By somebody.
But I couldn’t.
I know what it feels like to have someone touch you and your skin is on fire,
Your breaths quick
Your heart fluttering
Your soul yearning to give them everything.
I know that feeling inside out now.
And to let you travel my body, my soul, and feel nothing but a numb ache for someone else’s hands, someone else’s lips, someone else’s love…
That would be unforgivable.
So I stopped you.
In the dark, I let the cry seep into my voice,
I let the tears slide down my cheeks,
I could have stopped them too.
“I’m not okay yet. I’m not okay.”
It wasn’t a lie.
It was simply the gentlest way of telling you that you aren’t the one.
The one that I am in love with,
Whose touch I will never feel again.
The one I ache for deep in my heart whenever anyone touches me in any way.
I want to throw their hands off, refuse their hugs, shy away from their skin,
Because they are not her.
No, no, I am not okay.
And I did not lie when I said I didn’t know when I would be.
I don’t know IF I will be.
I hope, all I do is hope, and wait
For the day when I don’t wake up to the stunning pain of having had real love yanked out from under me,
For the day that maybe I can sleep the night without sobbing awake even once,
For the day when I find love with somebody else.
But honey, my dearest friend,
My truest friend,
I can tell you almost certainly that it won’t be you.
How I wish it would be, how easy it would be to love someone who knows exactly what it is I need,
Life doesn’t work that way.
Yesterday you touched me gently, with more tenderness than I deserved,
And yesterday I shrank from your touch,
And lay in the dark with my tears and my memories and my hole in my chest that I try and breathe around,
And waited for the dawn to dull my pain.
Knowing all the time that my hope to love you was false,
That nothing is ever so easy.
Stay with him, stay with someone who will choose you first.
Yesterday I found a new way to cry,
Because my solitude isn’t easily broken,
Because who knows when someone will make me feel alive again,
Because these wonderful beautiful people want and love me,
And that means nothing in the face of how I loved her.
Yesterday I realized that today I am alone,
And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
How terrifying.